Vegan cocktails, what? Aren't most cocktails that don't come with a novelty slab of bacon vegan already? Apparently not, and we're insensitive eco-idiots with anchovy blood on our hands for assuming otherwise. Thankfully there is a place you can go where you can be sure your libations are free of gelatin and crushed beetles. You'll find it in the fussy-person's utopia we call Brooklyn, where the Pine Box Rock Shop makes sure no animal byproducts touch your pristine lips.
The Bushwick bar has been quietly selling vegan cocktails for years, but today the Brooklyn Paper blows the lid off their whole operation, which co-owner Heather Rush explains as "an ethical choice on our part. I like the idea that vegan food is normal food." According to the Pine Box website, "many companies that produce spirits, beers, wines and sodas unnecessarily incorporate the use of gelatin, isinglass (fish bladders), carmine (ground beetles) and other 'ingredients' for filtration or presentation-related reasons." Luckily, these substances are paired with alcohol, which will make you forget all about those fish bladders.
In order to offer a full cocktail menu that will ultimately only hurt humans, not animals, Pine Box bartenders have come up with creative workarounds. According to Brooklyn Paper, they "make their own Bailey’s-type cream out of vanilla vodka, Kahlua, Frangelico and vanilla soy milk, which goes in the Sam in a Sweater, a mix of the vegan cream with root beer, Cointreau, vodka and brandy cherries. And since most Worcestershire sauces — used in bloody Marys — include anchovies, they use their own version that instead has a vegetable protein."
The Devil in Disguise Bloody Mary features a stiff shot of vegan bacon vodka, which we aren't really sure is actually a thing. But until this morning we didn't know vegan cocktails were actually a thing, so we don't know what to believe any more. Kids these days are mixing cocktails with exotic carbon neutral cruelty free artisanal home grown substances we never even dared imagine!
