Battle in Berlin
We came, we saw & we conquered. After over 2 weeks of travelling all over Europe filming bartenders, talking to bartenders & drinking with bartenders it was time to face the final hurdle in what is arguably the biggest bar show on the European event calendar. Bar Convent Berlin annually attracts over 15,000 bar professionals from all across the globe - the event itself was so anticipated that tickets were sold out over a month before the event even began officially. Cocktails For You was present & came out swinging so in brief here is the breakdown through our eyes.
Cocktails For You teamed up with DeKuyper bring free seminars to the masses of bartenders who couldn't secure tickets during the bar convent. Speaking alongside the likes of Iain Bell, Nicolas Saint-Jean & Camper English we told the story of the Cocktails For You platform & sharing some of our humble beginning as well our development over the years including some of our existing projects in Kazakhstan, Ukraine & the U.S. This was our second time public speaking in front of bartenders about what we do & some of our ideas for the bar industry that we’re trying to share. It is all always difficult transitioning from an online resource to meeting some of your followers & fans in real life so we’d like to use this opportunity to say a huge that you to all the bartenders who turned out that day to support us & our cause.
The next seminar of the day came as unique collaboration between Lowlander Beer in the Netherlands, Loggerhead Bar in Ukraine & Cocktails For You. We’d met Frederik of Lowlander Beer a while ago & he told us all about the ancient traditions of brewing beer with botanicals as well as his ambition to work with bartenders to push the boundaries of mixology. Beer cocktails have definitely been a trend we’ve seen recently especially with the release of Jacob Griers “Cocktails on Tap” book a few years ago. We at Cocktails For You are especially found of beer in cocktails having frequently featured beer cocktails on our guest shift menus around the world.
Loggerhead Bar from Kiev completely blew our mind away this year after we visited Ukraine for the first time to support the Barometer Bar Show earlier in the year. This bar is a speakeasy style not by concept but rather by necessity as it is tucked away in a nondescript alley way in the centre of the city & is completely rests of the idea of the loggerhead poker originally used to make the first cocktails back in the 16th century. Using patent-pending technology we showcased the Loggerhead concept for the first time & launched it in Bar Convent Berlin this year to a crowd of eager bartenders. We’ll expand on the concept in a later article!
Our final push came at our event at the one of the oldest & most respected bars in the Berlin scene - Green Door. Organised by Cocktails For You & curated by Arash Ghassemi as well as the rest of his team of superstars at the bar we attempted to do something not yet before attempted in the European scene(at least to our knowledge). 4 Different bars from all around Europe teamed up with 5 different brands over the course of 4 hours to bring cocktails to the masses in an ultimate “Battle Royale” of epic proportions.
A unique Pop-Up menu was designed by the team at Green Door for the event with our fellow warriors - Airto Cramer from Tales & Spirits in Amsterdam, Artem Skapenko from Loggerhead bar in Kiev & Elliot Ball from The Cocktail Trading Company in London. The hometown hero was none other than Arash Ghassemi himself & the event was supported by Union 55 rum, Rutte Royal Dutch Distillers, Lowlander Beer, Thomas Henry tonic waters & Hennessy Cognac so a big shout out to them for helping make this happen.
The next day was a tough start at they come but we spent the first 4 hours of the morning filming Salvatore Calabrese giving us some insider tips & tricks from his long illustrious career in the hospitality industry. A huge highlight came from bumping into Daniele Dalla Pola as he was launching his new range of Tiki Liqueurs right there at BCB. The Alamea range is most definitely worth checking especially the coffee & allspice were our personal favourites! The Tiki God cometh & the Tiki God delivereth....
For more photos of the event do not hesitate to follow this link to the full album on our Facebook page!