Lee Zaremba, a bartender at Billy Sunday, describes Red Bull—the ingredient with which Brian Bolles of Maude’s Liquor Bar challenged him to create a cocktail—as an “energy drink pretty popular among the extreme sports crowd—break dancers, cyclists, that kind of thing.” He should know—Zaremba, a former professional break dancer, used to perform at parties hosted by Red Bull. Personally, though, he says, “I’m more of a coffee guy.”
The idea, he says, is that the cocktail and the beer back enhance each other. The flavor of the cocktail “starts with bacanora, you get the funk from the sotol, then it leads to orange flavor and then Red Bull and spice. You finish with that nice, crisp pilsnerlike flavor from the kolsch, and then you’re ready to start again. You’re like, where was that funk?”
Zaremba has challenged Matty Colston of Parachute to create a cocktail with Cheez-Its. He considered tasking Colston with an easy ingredient, Zaremba says, but settled on “something soul-crushingly horrible.”
