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Sunday, February 14, 2010
Catching up with the Tipsy Texans
If New York’s Dale DeGroff wrote the gospel on the modern cocktail, and Fino’s Bill Norris planted the sacred seeds in Austin, then the Tipsy Texans are surely that cult’s most devout local disciples. The Texans — personal and professional partners David Alan and Joe Eifler who created their own “Tipsy” brand — are spreading the good word through blogs, tweets, classes, coaching, parties, demonstrations and home entertaining.
Inquisitive, gregarious Alan, 32, a lifelong Austinite and alumnus of Austin Community College’s culinary program, entered the food service industry right out of high school. He bussed tables at Katz’s Deli & Bar on West Sixth Street, then followed Barry Katz (son of founder and candidate for the Democratic nomination in the Texas lieutenant governor’s race, Marc Katz) to Houston to open and operate the restaurant group’s Montrose outlet.
The quieter, almost sacramental Eifler, 36, born in Louisville, Ken., attended Catholic schools, and drifted down to Austin after stops in Kansas and North Texas. His mother teaches; his father is a sales manager for Welch’s Foods, Inc., the grape juice folks. His studied English and theater, but he discovered a propensity for data-base and software management, which led him to his job at Advantage.
Together, the couple shares a restless Hurricane Ike rescue dog, Jigger, likely a Belgian Shepherd mix.
Coffee actually brought the Texans together. Alan tended the cafe at the weekly farmer’s market downtown. Eifler, who lived nearby, made it his custom to pick up a coffee each Saturday.
“I’d get the one cup,” Eifler says. Alan wondered if Eifler might be gay, but he talked about a girlfriend. So when the market took a weekend off, he suggested they just get together to talk. That’s when Eifler confessed he didn’t really like coffee.
That should have been a big hint, but Alan didn’t really absorb its meaning until Eifler followed him down to his car to announced, belatedly, “I came by every Saturday just to talk to you …”
A fan of Julie Powell, the Austin ex-pat who wrote “Julie and Julia,” Alan decided maybe he’d try a blog (www.tipsytexan.com ), with plans to make all of DeGroff’s 500 or so cocktails.
“We just started amassing data,” Alan says. “But we didn’t want a ‘me-too’ blog, so we asked, ‘What do we really want to do?’ Well, write about drinks, entertainment and food: The hospitality life. I had a career. Now I have a logo!”
The Dale/David Project, Alan’s online record of duplicating beverages in DeGroff’s “Craft of the Cocktail” and “The Essential Cocktail,” generated plenty of national buzz. (That’s DeGroff pictured.) That particular series is now up to 120 posts, most recently detailing the intricacies of making Navy Grog (Dark rum, añejo rum, Demerara rum, falernum, simple syrup, pimento dram, cinnamon syrup, grapefruit juice and lime juice go into this scary drink).
This spring, the Texans are teaching Tipsy Tech, a 12-week series of classes on the history and practice of mixology, further proselytizing the cocktail cult.
“What the ‘movement’ is really about is education,” Alan says. “Bartenders have to keep learning, studying books and blogs and conferences and other pros in the industry. … Most of the people who signed up for my class have been home bartenders, a real surprise to me.”
The pair also offer personal, at-home cocktail training, one on one, and extravagantly praise their fellow cocktail disciples at East Side Showroom, Péché, Perla, Fino and elsewhere. Simultaneously, they’ve raised the profile of cocktail-making through the charity party circuit.
“The fact that we’re working a lot of parties is a trend in itself — hiring pro bartenders who make craft cocktails, instead of letting caterers just pour wine, beer or simple ‘1+1’ drinks,” Alan says. “The public is demanding more, or at least they are enjoying more.”
What about the daunting number of supplies that go into their elevated version home bartending?
“When we started the Dale/David Project, we had to go on a massive shopping safari to find all the ingredients to make every drink in the book,” Alan says. “We literally have hundreds of bottles. For most things, they don’t go bad. So stock up and have fun! Don’t let them sit there, get busy making variations. Start with a classic base, add some of this or that and see what you come up with. That’s how new cocktails are born.”
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