Message 17659 of 39188 in General Discussion

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> I agree - the "homemade" stuff is far better when done right. Premade 
> is basically lemonade. 

Well when a sour calls for a base spirit + lemon juice + sugar...what's the 
problem?  Or a LIIT, Collins, etc.  It may throw things off a bit if you use 
it for a margarita but I've made them at parties before and they end up 
tasting really good, if not quite the same as a scratch margarita.  My recipe 
is a little different as I use lime and lemon juice.  

> 
> I'm always amazed how many tenders (online) claim they make their own 
> for their bar. While I'm sure a few do, it is the minority 
> until/unless you are in a very nice (or small) upscale bar. 

I can't even name a bar that I've been in in the last year or two that made 
any of their drinks fresh or used a homemade sour mix.  My place uses the 
Finest Call.  When I was new I attempted to convince them to let me make the 
mix myself.  I even measured the volume of juice I was getting from several 
limes and lemons and worked out a cost per liter of the stuff.  Unfortunately 
it was pretty close to the cost of the mix without including labor.  I might 
have pushed the issue but eventually I dropped it when it was clear that 
management wasn't interested.  

Then you have what happened last week: apparently the other tender at my work 
ran out of sour mix (my fault, things have been slow and I hadn't noticed we 
were low).  It's kept in the liquor room and he had to have the general 
manager go get him some.  My boss was telling me about this, I admitted that 
I'd overlooked this on my last order, but why didn't he just use fresh?  Then 
I rememebered that he probably has no idea what goes into a Whiskey Sour if 
you take sweet and sour mix off of the list.  Just a few days after that I was 
running a margarita special and guess what?  I ran out of mix.  So I switched 
to fresh.  And for some reason there was just a run on margaritas and LIITs, I 
had waiters running to bring me more fruit.  Unfortunately I'd taken my citrus 
press home previously and hadn't brought it back to work yet, but it was 
manageable.  

It's too bad, I enjoyed doing things "old school" even if it was just for that 
one night.