This is not your typical ‘bartender’ book. In fact The Long Pour maybe responsible for the biggest surge in teenagers wanting to be bartenders since Cocktail.
The Long Pour is a labour of love by a guy called Adam MacDonald a bartender who has recently moved to London to ply his trade. This is not a cocktail book, this is not a history book, this is not a novel about bartending. This ladies and gents is collection of bartending stories from around the world.
By bartending stories we don’t mean titles like ‘The time I found a pre-prohibition bottle of Bourbon in a back street store for 20p’ or ‘When I dreamt the idea for a shrub and made it and it was amazing…’. Oh no these are stories from the dark side, stories whispered like they are urban myths, stories that strike fear into bar owners and brand ambassadors the world over.
To use Adam’s own words The Long Pour is ‘a bartender’s anthology of hilarious tales and dirty tricks’. The tales come from bartenders from around the world. Most of them inking their most sordid tales into the history books using (rather bravely) their real names. There are some deemed to risky to be attributed to an actual person which are attributed to a Stig like persona called Paul Flair.
Let us give you an idea of the sort of topics some of these stories cover simply by giving you a few of the stories headlines.
- The 20 Euro Shag
- The Winners, The Whales, And The Wardrobe
- ‘This Beer Smells Like Shit’
- Special Occasion Stash
- The Viagra Challenge
You will not find cocktail recipes in this book. You will not find never seen before historical facts. You will not see beautiful arty cocktail pictures. You will NOT want to show it to your mum.
You will however be entertained. You will find yourself laughing, cringing, wincing and clenching – often at the same time. You will find yourself sympathising. You will find yourself saying ‘Really? ? ? ?’. You will also love the graphics work.
Now, at this point we would usually give you an extract from the book but the short stories contained within the pages of The Long Pour deserve to be enjoyed in their entirety (follow the link at the bottom of this article for the chance to download a couple of stories for free). We will however let you know what a couple of your peers had to say about it
‘Dripping with sarcasm, smothered with metaphors, and splashed with bone-dry wit. The Long Pour is the one book bartenders actually want to read’ Alan Kavanagh
‘Super funny stories, but should you pursue a career in bartending, don’t let your mother read this’ Alex Kratena
A small advanced warning is that if your not entrenched in the global flair scene you may not recognise a lot of the names of the contributors into this book. Don’t let that put you off, these flair guys sure do get up to some stuff but we are hoping that the undoubted success of this first book will lead to many more versions with many more people contributing.
Also bear in mind this is not a book for everyone. It isn’t just your mum that could find it a little ‘close to the bone’. If people get offended by South Park we suggest you keep them away from The Long Pour.
With the hell of Christmas shopping upon us this is a great option for the bartender who has everything (or a treat for yourself for doing your Christmas shopping). Be quick though folks, as its a limited print run and we have no doubt they will be all gone sooner rather than later.
To get hold of a copy visit http://thebartenderbook.com/