The making of a “Smokestack” cocktail at Copper Shaker in St. Pete

From left to right: Joey deVilla, Lyssa Adkins, Alistair Cockburn, Anitra Pavka.

On Monday, Anitra and I were at the Copper Shaker in downtown St. Pete to attend the Agile Social and celebrate the birthday of computer scientist Alistair Coburn, agile coach, and co-signer of the Agile Manifesto. I ended up playing some accordion for the party, and you can read more about it on my tech blog, Global Nerdy.

The Copper Shaker has a great cocktail menu…

…and one of the cocktails I had was the Smokestack (on the menu pictured above, it’s midway through the right column). It’s a Boulevardier-like whiskey cocktail made of WhistlePig rye, maple syrup, Peychaud’s bitters, a maraschino cherry, and maple smoke. The process of adding smoke to a drink made for some great photos, which appear below.

The bartender took out a maple plank and a blowtorch, a sure sign that interesting things were about to happen:

As you might expect, doing this creates maple smoke, which the bartender quickly captured in a glass:

The tricky part is quickly flipping the smoke-filled glass over and then pouring the drink into it. The bartender did this masterfully, in one smooth motion:

The end result was a smooth, smoky glass of joy:

The Copper Shaker is located in downtown St. Petersburg at 169 1st Avenue North, between 1st and 2nd streets. You can find out more about them on their website.