Bar Convent Berlin 2009 from Jay Hepburn on Vimeo.

First impressions of Bar Convent Berlin 2009 have been published by Jay Hepburn at "Oh Gosh! TV". Those who did not make it to the Convent this year now have the opportunity to get an impression of what was going on. Jay will publish more sequences of Berlin bars and bartenders in the next few days.

Oh Gosh! TV is the video channel of English cocktail blogger Jay Hepburn:

http://ohgosh.tv

For the last two years the scenic and dense athmosphere of Bar Convent has been mainly shaped by the architecture of the old Glashaus building at Arena Berlin. Our new event location, Postbahnhof am Ostbahnhof, requires greater efforts to make the major bar industry meeting excel visually. Therefore we have teamed up with a competent partner from Berlin.

Philip Duff defined the role of the international brand ambassador, as it is common today in the spirits industry. Philip is known worldwide as one of the most experienced bartenders of today's bar industry. He's been working as global brand ambassador for the Dutch liquor company Bols for nine years. Now he acts as the operator of the bar Door 74 in Amsterdam. With his company Liquid Solutions he does also consult spirit brands or train bartenders for international hotel chains. 

Link: www.liquidsolutions.org

This year's Bar Convent Berlin sees the first independent "Bar Shirt Awards". The most creative motiv will be awarded with the liquid trophy of 20 Gin Basil Smash cocktails.

What is the best thing about Bar Convent Berlin? It's what the visitors make of it! The Frankfurt bar scene and the Berne bars scene for example have organized group travellings to Berlin. Also there'll be guest bartenders working in cocktal bars everywhere in the city. And last but not least, there's now actually the first Bar Shirt Award at Bar Convent Berlin.

Both visitors and folks who can't visit Bar Convent are able to attend. The idea for the Bar Shirt Awards stems from the crew of bar Le Lion in Hamburg. The award jury is looking for the most creative t-shirt at Bar Convent Berlin. As you can see above the first companies start joining in.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that all this started with a pen, a paper and an idea. I just took this snapshot when searching for a cocktail book. The picture shows all the stuff that'll go on sale at the BCB shop in one week's time. Cocktail book reprints and rare spirits. It's just one small corner of our storage space that we started renting last year. Our office space was simply getting too small. And this is just a small corner of the storage. Strange how fast things grow over the years.

One of the godparents, if not the godfather of the New Dutch bar
scene, Ricardo Sporkslede, in an interview at Bar Convent Berlin 2008. Ricardo operates the company Fabulous Shaker Boys in Amsterdam.
Services are cocktail caterings, bartender training and consulting in the bar and
cocktail area.

Link: www.fabulousshakerboys.com

Assisted by the charming Warsaw bartender Patrycja Wojczuk we did a series of interviews with prominent figures of the international bar business at Bar Convent Berlin last year. As the Convent 2009 is only days and hours away we now take the opportunity to serve these interview videos as an aperitif to our readers, before they hit the road to Berlin. In this interview Simon Difford, who bought back the rights to Class magazine this year, talks about his career in the liquid business.

Of course Simon will be back this year at Bar Convent Berlin. Among other things he will attend "Let's Talk Tequila" (Distillers' Talk, Oct 5th at 5 pm) to present his latest idea, "Agave Sec", an agave liqueur is developing together with French liquor manufacteurer Giffard. Agave Sec is meant to serve as a substitute for Cointreau in a Margarita. But it's probably best you learn those details from Simon himself. [more ...]

Online registration for Bar Convent Berlin 2009 will close in six days, on September 27th, 2009! In the meantime, Mixology subscribers can still get free access to Bar Convent after registering at the BCB website. All other visitors will attend for a discounted rate if they use the online registration.

It's only six days until registration for Bar Convent will close. If you are a sbucriber and you have lost your subscription number - no worries: just write an email with full name and address to Jonathan (jonathan@mixology.eu). We 'll look it up for you. Please do also note that the opening hours of Bar Convent have changed this year. When we asked our readers in an online poll, over 64% opted for late opening hours. It's obvious that an event for an industry that works at night, must be adapt to her specific needs. The Convent will therefore open its doors from 12 pm to 8 pm on both show days.

The Date:
5th & 6th of October 2009

The Venue:
Postbahnhof am Ostbahnhof, Berlin

The Speakers:
Martin Bahta, Dave Broom, Jared Brown, Ian Burrell, Jürgen Deibel, Marcin Kasprzycki, Anistatia Miller, Zoltan Nagy, Ben Reed, Mark Ridgwell, Charles Schumann, Hidetsugu Ueno, Charles Vexenat, Angus Winchester and many more

The Program:
Bar in Recession; Bar Tools; Meet the Cocktail Bloggers; The Origin of French Cocktails; Foodpairing & Aroma Charts; The ABC of successful Bar Catering; Systematic Approach to Tasting Spirits; The Business Plan; Introduction to the Art of Japanese Bartending; Bar Legends in Discussion; ...

Actually I don't know which speaker the audience above is listening to, but as you can see the main stage was packed all the time yesterday. In about one hour we'll start with the next slot. A discussion about the efficient design of bars. It'll be interesting to see, if the nocturnal adventures of last night will show. It's likely that a few seats in the audience remain empty. I remember a young bartender from Dresden dancing on a table of club Maxxim's Beefeater lounge with his sun glasses on. Tonight we'll hand out the Mixology Bar Awards 2008. Another opportunity to climb on top of tables. ;)

The picture above gives you an impression of the build-up of Bar Convent Berlin today. I got an email from German cocktail blogger Thekenmeister just a couple of minutes ago. He'll be at the BCB this year, too. So we got a total of four cocktail bloggers with Jeffrey Morgenthaler, Jay Hepburn and Christian Niefanger. A quantum of solace (to quote the new James Bond) for those, who couldn't make it this year. I'm sure we'll see some nice coverage. [more ...]

Three months ago we published a statistic that showed the origin of people registering for Bar Convent Berlin. We've recently done another analysis when we crossed the threshold of 500 registrations. We even got bets running now, if we'll get 1000 registrations this year. It'll probably not be that much. But the split of different nationalties attending our Convent is interesting. Currently about 25% of all attendants registered are from abroad:

Apart from the GSA countries most visitors come from Holland and the UK. Bar Convent Berlin is slowly turning into a hub for the European bar scene. The more diverse the mix, the more attractive the whole event.

We're really looking forward to it!

Link: www.barconvent.de

On the 29th und 30th of September Bols will present a unique diamond shaker at Bar Convent Berlin.

This handmade 35.000 Euro bar tool was created exclusively by Coster Diamonds, Amsterdam. The French company Établissements Bernard RDB designed a high class leather case for the shaker, that is made of pure silver and 18 carat gold, emblazed with 480 brilliants of 19,05 carat.

The Bols Diamond Shaker sort of illustrates, what Phil Duff's speech "Get rich & famous with Bols" on the September 29th at 12.30 pm will be about. ;)

Link: www.bols.com

Everybody coming to Berlin for Bar Convent Berlin will arrive with the question where to get the coolest chilled drink with the best bunch of people, when the doors of the Convent have closed. Therefore we've organized a number of liquid events, that will cater for your needs. You'll be too late for Bobby of Cascade bar (see above) though. He's been serving his Feuerzangenbowle punch around 1932.