Twenty years behind the bar, from neighborhood dive bars to high-end fine dining, across Southeastern Pennsylvania.
I've spent twenty years behind the bar in Southeastern Pennsylvania — starting in neighborhood dive bars and working my way up through high-end fine dining rooms. That range matters: a dive bar teaches you speed, consistency, and how to read a room fast. A fine dining bar teaches you precision, technique, and why the details most guests never notice are the ones that separate a good drink from a forgettable one.
Along the way I've competed in cocktail competitions, which is its own kind of education — nothing exposes a weak technique faster than building a drink in front of judges with a clock running.
The Cult of Cocktails is where all of that experience goes when it isn't behind a bar. The technique guides on this site — fat washing, smoking, molecular mixology, clarification, clear ice, barrel aging — are methods I've actually used, not theory. The Sacred Pour recipe book is the same: every recipe in it is something I'd actually make and serve.
If you're just starting out, welcome. If you've been doing this a while and you're looking for the techniques most bartenders never bother to learn, you're in the right place too.