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NoLo+, Wellington (2026)

30/04/2026

It's been a hot minute but the wee one has recently started pre-school so I've got juuust enough brain space/sleep to get back into competing. This is my dessert-y entry for Scapegrace's 2026 whisky comp, if I make it through to the next round you'll be able to enjoy it at Next Door in Newtown!

45ml Scapegrace Vanguard single malt whisky
22.5ml Poires William pear eau de vie (30% abv)
7.5ml 2:1 demerara:ginger
7.5ml toasted oat liqueur*
20ml/25g vanilla custard aerated as a float

*Toast 10g wholegrain oats until darkened and steep in 100ml Scapegrace Gold navy strength gin for 4 hours. Strain, then mix the gin 1:1 by weight with white sugar until dissolved

This is a surprisingly punchy yet very quaffable nightcap drink. Sweet and strong, it drinks like a desserty dalliance between an old fashioned and a flip.

From anyone who knows me from my Cardiff days, this one's strong on the Rummer Tavern pub grub and winter pudding vibes. Iechyd da!

I struggled with a name, so far we're going with
🍸'All Custard, No Tart"

01/05/2025

🍷 "Sloe Burn"

🌦️ Something autumnal that's not quite ready to commit to a southern hemisphere winter—a warming spritz on a wet day

🍾 sloe gin, a hefty amount of ginger bitters, cognac, tamarind, orange, and prosecco

27/04/2025

🍸 "Campfire Elegy"

🍾 An entry for the 'Art of Italicus' spritz challenge by , to create an interpretation of the aperitivo as inspired by art. Five ingredients max, with only one ingredient allowed to be homemade but with the option to suggest a food pairing.

🎨 I spent a long time chatting with my artsy friend about Art Nouveau and even had a drink sketched out for this, with licorice tea in place of Alphonse Mucha's absinthe, but ultimately I had to go back to the drawing board and be true to who I am—an absolute nerd.

🎮 An indie videogame by developers called 'Outer Wilds' inspired me. It presents itself as a cutesy sci-fi adventure but (mild spoilers) 22 minutes in, your sun goes supernova. Instead of ‘game over’, this is just the beginning—waking back at the start you keep exploring your little solar system against a 22 minute clock, each cycle uncovering more knowledge, more wisdom. The game becomes a bittersweet elegy on the acceptance of death and taking joy in life as we find it.

🔥 Campfires feature heavily in the game and my drink is designed to evoke that sense of companionship and ritual as well as reflecting the game's sun in its various states of being (subgiant to supernova).

🏕️ Italicus' bergamot liqueur is deepened with orange bitters. A Greek pine resin wine called Retsina is added along with salted, smoky Lapsang Souchong tea, all topped with grapefruit soda.

🔵 I've paired the drink with a spherical Earl Grey and pine tincture marshmallow to bring out the bergamot, rolled it in orange ash for the campfire vibes and dusted it with blue lustre dust to mimic the sun just before it explodes.

⏳ The drink is a little smoky, a little bittersweet. Have a sip and think about what joy there is to be found in the moment and in the folks around you.

❤️ Thanks to Italicus for the fun challenge and to Mobius for making a piece of art that has deeply affected the way I see life.

07/03/2025

🥳 was a little too busy making drinks to take many pics, but had a blast last weekend making tarot themed cocktails and non-alcs at for the "rule of three" 3rd birthday bash

📸 pics:

☠️ "death, reversed" house made espresso liqueur, fermented banana peel, Vitamin C, ginger & tonic

🗡️ "three of swords" cachaça, mezcal, yuzu, bitter spiced amaro, sweetened red dragon fruit and mango-coconut storm cloud

🗼 "the tower" pear & elderflower vodka, pisco, cucumber, apple, mint & absinthe, to be disastrously poured over lime candy floss

🐓 and some mini corn flake cakes as garnish for the non-alc "temperance"

🍸 not pictured were "the high priestess" with strawberry gin, acidified pomegranate, campari, peach liqueur and sparkling wine, and "three of cups" which was a fun desserty-posset thing with edible flowers

27/02/2025

🍸 "Have a Banana" or, as I think I may have called it on the entry form, "Memories of a Banana" 😅

🍊A really fun challenge from to use the entire fruit in a margarita riff - no waste

🍌Have you ever seen a fresh banana blossom? It's a deep purplish-red and gorgeous. I Infused that into a Blanco tequila, along with banana leaf into a cachaça, the little yellow florets into a sweet crema de mezcal... And mixed those with fermented banana fruit flesh, a tepache made of fermented banana peels, some acids for that lime-y zing, and a heavily salted banana peel oleo saccharum that came out something like a caramel. Oh, and of course, the Cointreau whose orange flavour I boosted with a lil' orange bitters and orange blossom water

🌿 This was such a hoot to put together, it's ended up tasting funky and grassy and really quite unique. Swipe through to see my deranged attempt at making a useable cup out of banana leaves!

🦧 A lifetime ago when I was a little boy I would run around pretending to be an orangutan so that people would feed me more bananas (and banana flavoured ice creams), guess I haven't grown up all that much

24/01/2025

🍸 "Nice Pear"
, pisco, blanc vermouth, homemade elderflower liqueur, pear & lemon juice.
🍦 Topped with a mousse made of molten ube gelato and vegan ricotta, garnished with a .nz freeze dried lychee

Just mucking around with concepts

22/01/2025

🍸 "Cosmic Dragon"

My swansong for Pravda... A entry for the

have a mini serve available on their happy hour called the Little Cosmic Dragon, go check it out!

It started life as some kind of French 75 riff but then spent its gap year binge watching S*x & The City so ended up with a Cosmo fixation. Anyway, who doesn't love a lurid pink drink.

45mls Four Pillars Yuzu
40mls Dragon fruit juice (red/pink pitaya)
15mls Acidified dragon fruit oleo saccharum*
10mls Four Pillars Navy Strength infused with shiro miso**
10mls Fresh lemon juice
10mls Yuzu extract
10mls Browned MSG honey***
3 drops orange bitters

Shakey shake, double strain into a chilled coupe. Orange twist garnish.

*For the acidified dragon fruit oleo saccharum:
Take the (washed) dragon fruit skins left over from juicing and soak in equal weight white sugar for approx. 3 days until the sugar has largely dissolved into a pink syrup. Weigh this syrup and mix it with 0.5% by weight of each of citric, malic and tartaric acids

**For the miso-infused Four Pillars Navy Strength gin:
Weigh 10g mild/shiro/white miso and add to it 100mls of the gin. Sit for 1 hour, strain

***For the browned MSG honey:
Add honey to pan, simmer until large bubbles and nutty aroma emerge, approx 5 mins. Strain and measure liquid volume. At a ratio of 4:1:1 mix browned honey with white port and dry sherry, eg. 100mls honey, 25mls port, 25mls sherry. Weigh the resulting syrup and mix in 3.75% by weight in MSG

26/11/2024

Those colours really are something else

03/11/2024

Yeah, I forgot my nice camera for this one but it's what's on the inside that counts, right?
A hallowe'en Zombie for .asiapacific

28/10/2024

Another week, another tweak of a rum classic for .asiapacific

Juiced the entire pineapple for this Jungle Bird and forgot to save any for the garnish, blessed be the dehydrator in times of woe

NoLo+

30/04/2026

01/05/2025

27/04/2025

07/03/2025

27/02/2025

24/01/2025

22/01/2025

26/11/2024

03/11/2024

28/10/2024

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