If there's one good thing we can say about 2024, it's that we're getting better at seeing each other. In late September, we got to meet up in Bloomington, where it all began. And this time, it wasn't 6 years, but only one and a half. When we last posted in July 2023, we had just met up in Minneapolis¹ St. Paul. The last time² we had met before that was also in Bloomington, so we've decided that this is a clear pattern, and have plans to meet in Bloomington again in 2032.

Since it's been a while, and we were struggling to find a foothold to get back into writing on this thing after the aforementioned year and a half, we decided to take advantage of the holiday timing and revisit a feature from December 2020: The Superman and God Cocktail Countdown to the New Year! We hope to have a few chances to write weekly-ish this month, so we're going to feature one or two cocktails that are relevant to what we want to write about each time we do, wrapping up with a final post on New Year's Eve before we launch into the new year.

What We're Thinking

We spent a lot of time thinking about where to meet up this year. At first, we tossed around ideas like Philadelphia, DC, Chicago, and a variety of other places. At some point, given the year we'd had, I think nostalgia won out over novelty, and we decided to just meet in Bloomington for old times sake. After all, it's about halfway between us.

Jon arrived shortly before Rachel on a Sunday and decided to make the obvious move to order more pizza from Avers than we could possibly eat that evening. He had brought his dog Bernie, but Bernie's not allowed to eat Pizza, so Rachel had to help after she arrived not too long after. And so began what would be a week of reminiscing, remembering, failing to remember, and sometimes remembering that we forgot.

On Monday, we admittedly didn't do a ton, other than marvel at what had changed and what had not. We spent a lot of time orienting ourselves to a place we hadn't been in eight years.

We did a little exploring in the immediate downtown area. This included a stroll past the town square to Fountain Square Mall, where we enjoyed a coffee in the basement cafe, which was - to our relief - still in operation. The rest of the day was spent wandering, reminiscing, and brainstorming. A little later in the evening, Rachel needed to wrap up some work, so Jon headed to his favorite bar, the Video Saloon.

Tuesday was more active. We grabbed some coffee from Soma and wandered on to campus, First we visited our old stomping grounds, Ballantine 666, and also too a moment to pay homage to the dining hall location where this whole writing idea was born. But Ballantine has long since not been the location of the Germanic Studies department, so we continued on to the Global and International Studies building to ambush the Germanic Studies department.³ Then we headed back towards town and decided to get a bite to eat and a few beers at The Tap. 

 By the end of the day, we were pretty wiped out, so we decided to just head back to the hotel to grab some drinks and some food from the bar. After workshopping Manhattans with the bartender⁴, Rachel brought everything up and we watched Coherence, a mind-fucky movie about a dinner party where a comet passing overhead causes all kinds of unexpected multiversal mayhem. Luckily, our universe stayed intact, and we went on to have an epic Wednesday.

On Wednesday morning, we met up with another old friend from our grad school days who is now based in Bloomington again. It was a nice mix of new venues and old with a visit to Crumble (not the cookie!), Little Tibet, Malibu Grill, and Cardinal Spirits. A highlight of the day was a short field trip to Oliver Winery, a place we frequented once or twice a year during grad school whenever we needed to be able to bring “fancy” wine back home for the holidays. A new addition to the lineup - Apple Pie wine - was a hit with my extended family even now.

Our Wednesday activities were also the inspiration for our first cocktail of the countdown. After a post-dinner stroll and reprise visit to the lovely Cardinal Spirits, where we had a delicious version of this week’s featured cocktail, we returned to the hotel and Rachel once again chanced the hotel bar to order a round of drinks to finish out our last evening of the trip. YET AGAIN, a DIFFERENT bartender didn’t know how to make a basic staple cocktail, this time an Old Fashioned, so Rachel waited about 15 minutes while the bartender looked the recipe up on her phone, called the manager over, and laboriously followed a step-by-step instruction tutorial to make the drink. I mean, if that’s all it takes to qualify as a bartender these days, maybe I should consider moonlighting.

Finally, after what seemed like no time had passed whatsoever, we grabbed some coffee and pastries at a surprisingly swanky coffee shop at the Graduate Hotel and headed our separate ways home. While Rachel had battled torrential rain and arrived late on Sunday to the reunion, Jon braved Hurricane Helene on his way back home on Thursday, even needing to crash in his childhood hometown rather than continuing all the way back to his current home. All in all, we really are the “calm between each other’s storms.”

What We're Drinking

At Cardinal Spirits in Bloomington, we tried a drink that we really enjoyed: the Brown Butter Sage Old Fashioned.

The recipe was a little vague, but I wanted to at least take a stab at the general taste profile, so I decided to go shopping for ingredients to approximate it in a drink that I would call Sage Advice:

• Butter
• Sage
• Aromatic Bitters
• An Orange
• Maraschino Cherries
• Bourbon: I used Basil Hayden Subtle Smoke
• Sweet Vermouth: I used Cnia Mata, a Spanish Vermouth

The Subtle Smoke caught my eye because I wanted to approximate a smokey element without actually having to light anything on fire in my house this evening. As for the Brown Butter Sage, here's how I prepared a simple syrup to mix into the drink I would make:

Brown Butter Sage Simple Syrup

• Combine butter and sage in a saucepan to melt
• Keep stirring until the butter melts and begins to brown
• Turn off the heat and allow the top layer to solidify.
• Skim the top fatty layer and retain the clarified sage-infused butter for your syrup
• Heat sugar and water in equal parts in a saucepan
• Add a couple of tablespoons of the clarified butter to the syrup and stir until sugar, butter and water have mixed thoroughly.
• Optionally filter one more time through a fine mesh or cheesecloth
• Set aside for use in cocktails

Sage Advice

• Combine 0.5-1 part of brown butter sage simple syrup, a few dashes of aromatic bitters, a cherry, and a gentle squeeze of orange wedge into a cocktail shaker. 
• Optionally retain a cutting of the orange wedge peel for garnish.
• Muddle and then swirl the ingredients together until they have mixed pretty well.
• Add ice to the shaker, along with 4 parts bourbon and 1 part vermouth (e.g. 2 shots bourbon, 0.5 shots vermouth).
• Shake or stir well to combine all ingredients.
• Strain into a class, either straight or on ice as desired.
• Garnish with orange peel for added fragrance if desired.