Getting Knock out cocktails at the Haymaker

First and foremost, thank you so much for letting us come through here at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, taking the time to talk to us. So why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your bar. Yeah, my name is Josh Gagne. I'm the GM and operating partner here at The Haymaker in downtown Raleigh. We've been here for a little over five years actually. Originally we definitely leaned more on your experimental cocktail mindset with our program and then once we got into our groove we found things as who we were and what their favorites were, things that I took off the menu that kept getting asked for. So now they're our own classics. So we still like to be experimental with what we're doing but at the end of the day it's all about our consumer. So what would you say the program kind of focuses on? So obviously like we're talking about like you know three to five ingredient drinks that are quick to execute but then also experimental. So does that mean that you guys are doing things like, are you doing like culinary style things or farmer's market cocktails with like a classic build or like what people expect? Yeah, we found that just because the delivery of the cocktail can be quick doesn't mean that what went into it needs to be quick. Right. So for here we take a lot of time behind the scenes to barrel age our cocktails or you know make syrups that take a couple days. We've had clarified milk punches on our menu. One of our most popular cocktails of all time, the Bad Guys Wear Black, is an old-fashioned spinoff that we use. The greatest name for a cocktail by the way. We use a burnt sugar syrup that I can't even make in here and not even in my house. I have to go to like a full like kitchen with an HVAC system because it just creates so much smoke and it's the sketchiest thing that I do but it creates this really dope syrup that we use and has really kind of pinpointed itself as like one of our identifiers as our most popular cocktails. Right on. I noticed that you have a couple of vintage punch bowls above the bar. Yeah. So you guys do punch service. Is this a thing here? We do. That's kind of part of the name with Haymaker being you know a knockout punch. Oh there you go. Hey! I was wondering about the name. So you'll notice like some boxing stuff around in the bathrooms on the wallpaper with boxing glove things like that. So that was just kind of the fun approach to the concept that kind of allowed you know for us it's allowed us to kind of lean on like hey with some cool like boxing terms and themes that we can like attach to our cocktails and stuff. So that along with 90s hip-hop is sounds like a strange combination. No it's not. But everyone I mean that's what we're probably known for the most is like oh they're the hip-hop bar in downtown. So there's a ton that we can do as far as you know relying on sort of a creative start. Cool man. I mean should we make some cocktails? For sure. I'd like to see what you guys do. Yeah. So we'll probably start with that Bad Guys Wear Black. Yeah let's do that. So essentially we're gonna build it just like a an old-fashioned classic old-fashioned but we're gonna add a burnt sugar syrup, a little Luxardo, a couple dashes of bitters and we'll go from there. So we're gonna start with two ounces of we've always used Old Forester Hunter Proof here for our old-fashioned and for this Bad Guys Wear Black. I like a little higher proof bourbon in old-fashioned because you want that to stand out. Then we'll go for a quarter ounce of this burnt sugar syrup and we'll do a bar spoon of Luxardo, a little Maraschino cherry, a couple dashes of Ango, a little cold draft ice but if you don't have a cold draft. From there we'll just hit it with a little orange zest over the top. I'm gonna take a straw. Oh hell yeah it's nice and dry. It's got that like when you taste the Maraschino it's got that burnt kind of bittersweet thing. Yeah. Nice yeah and it doesn't actually see my whole thing was that the burnt sugar syrup would detract from the flavor of the bourbon. It doesn't. That's why you got to go quarter ounce at the most. What's next? So we've got the Sing Like a Bee which is Earl Grey infused gin, some fresh lemon, honey, and fresh orange juice. There you go. So we're gonna start with two ounces of Earl Grey infused gin. You can use whatever kind of gin you prefer. After that we'll go to three quarter ounces of fresh orange juice. Then we'll go with a half of lemon and a half of honey syrup and then this one's fun. We always like to grab a fancy tea cup. This would be so cool to serve Sing Like a Bee out of. And this one again with the orange we'll just add a little fresh honey on top. Love it. Like afternoon tea. The best afternoon tea. Pinky out. Pinky out like so. Yeah I like what the orange is doing in there. Yeah. You know orange is such a controversial fruit to use in cocktails and people have such I don't know dyed in the wool kind of ideas about it. Right. But you know added to a whiskey sour always just takes that whiskey sour up a notch. Yeah. And I think it's doing the same thing here. It's cool. It's like a bees knees variation. Yeah. Right. That Earl Grey though is working real nice with that orange and then the honey and it's all very well balanced. It's one of those drinks where you can taste all of the ingredients separately but you can also taste them as a combined sort of. Right. You know thing that that evolves you know. Yeah. It's nice. Which is as long as you can get a good balance that should be kind of the goal for it right. It's not overly sweet. It's nice and tart. And so I'm gonna refute the people who say like one-to-one honey. I don't think one-to-one honey balances citrus very well at all. Yeah. It tends to be a little too tart I think. Right. Cool. One more. One last one. Right here we got the Smoke Show. This is one of those cocktails for when we have a guest that says I like bourbon. Which one do you recommend? The bad guys who wear black or the Smoke Show? Kind of go in both directions. Whichever direction you're looking to go. For this we'll start out with two ounces of bourbon. Here we use virgin bourbon, charcoal filtered, 101 proof, maple syrup, fino sherry, and pineapple juice. Then we're gonna go three-quarter ounce of lime juice and then we're gonna shake. So you're saying it sounds pretty simple. What's our spin on it? What gives it kind of its own makes it unique and that's where the smoke aspect's coming into play. So we'll strain this over ice and then we're gonna hit it over the top with some a black cardamom tincture that we make here. So I like drinking this one straight out of the glass you know with no straw. That way you get your nose in that black cardamom. Which is cool because it's nice to add sort of a smoke element without smoking a glass. Right. You know so either using tea, black cardamom is a genius stroke I never thought of. So there's that you know but like it's always good because you know for me simplicity doesn't denote something that's not complex. It's just someone who's had the creativity to think of something that would be complex. Yeah. Streamline it all right and then think of like so for instance like maple syrup, fino, and pineapple sounds not only does it sound fire but I haven't like come across that at any other place. Right. So it's just like a streamlined version of something that would be complicated made into a three-step drink. A lot of questions we get with this it sounds sweet. I don't like using the word sweet because it sounds very overpowering. Maple syrup although it's sweet we balance it out with fresh citrus so that it's it's more rich than than sweet. So it does its job from a sweetness perspective but it does still still balance. But it also has three different elements that are adding citrus to I mean that are adding like sourness to it. So you've got your lime juice, you've got your sherry, and you also have the pineapple which has a little acid as well. Right. So you're kind of getting that like citric element that's balancing that sugar out anyway. And the maple syrup everybody is adding a warmness to it and sort of a fall complexity to it that's what we're looking for this season. Right. Exactly. That's what we're looking for. This became you know when we first opened I think this went on in the fall then we got through the the winter and it kind of I was kind of like okay well this isn't necessarily a summer drink but it has become year-round cocktails. I mean I drink that in the summer. Yeah. But it is also very markedly fall cocktail and what's cool is that like it's still hot in LA so we're still doing like hot weather cocktails and it was nice to come out here and then like you know we kind of went to a couple bars yesterday and uh we started running into like actual fall cocktails. Yeah starting to everybody some people are making that transition. Yeah it's good to make that transition a little early. I mean it is technically fall since the 22nd of September. Right. So we're in the fall even though it's we're in North Carolina so we still got like another month of heat. Let's talk about the artwork on the wall. The artwork yeah. So when we originally opened here we had nothing on that wall other than the antique mirror and it seemed great the first year that we did Cocktail Kingdom's Miracle Pop-Up we wrapped the whole thing in wrapping paper and tinsel. Okay that's cool. So once we got through and we went to go tear it all down everybody in here was like oh my god that wall looks so blank. So we were trying to figure out what to do with it and two weeks later a guy named Chris Evans came in now one of my good friends here he said I think I have some artwork for you that would look really dope on the wall and I recognized him I was like you're the one that did the J. Cole painting and he's like yeah I'm like oh just bring stuff in. So it's been about four years now and he's he and I just have a great relationship on him bringing in artwork he's changing stuff up all the time usually tries to match it with our concept here which it's like the Biggie and Nipsey and J. Cole and then he recently opened his tattoo shop in downtown Raleigh so now one of our neighbors so works out great and that's another talking piece for the space where everybody's trying to guess who all is in the artwork. Oh yeah I love it. Good Trip Inc is his Instagram account he's got a lot more of his really dope artwork. Cool man well I want to thank you so much for doing this yeah high five. Thank you yeah pleasure. Appreciate you. Yeah man I think everybody should come drink at this awesome bar because it's awesome. For sure. Drinks are they are fire. Awesome appreciate it.