TASTE: Midnight Mirage
Midnight Mirage – Credit: Konrad Odhiambo/The Dishing
From bartending in the East Village to launching a craft cocktail menu in an upstate pizza parlor, Nate Gebhard finds theater in mixology and “guiding people through experiences.” In his Midnight Mirage, Gebhard connects the dots.
Words: Susie Davidson Powell
Photos: Konrad Odhiambo/The Dishing
Bartender: Nate Gebhard, head bartender
Night School: nightschool4real.com
IG: @nightschool4real IG: @nategeb Tip your bartender: @nategeb
Read our Guest Shift interview with Nate here.
The pour: I lightly roast beets for about 15 minutes and use them to infuse London dry gin for 24 hours, adding a little rosemary for the last half hour to 40 minutes. For the build, I use a semi-sweet Lustau blanc vermouth and equal parts of honey syrup and lemon so it’s in the vein of a Bees Knees, but doctored because the beet is so present and it's this beautiful purple. The vermouth gives it a little more depth so it's not just gin and beet, and then the honey and lemon give it sweetness and a little tartness. I serve it in a coupe with rosemary garnish.
Nate Gebhard Photo: Konrad Odhiambo/The Dishing
The inspiration: The Midnight Mirage is one of the very few cocktails that doesn’t follow the Night School theme. Most of my drinks have names like ‘Study Buddy’ or a recent P.S. 518., but I had already created this before I came to Night School. I came up with the original recipe on a plane going to a wedding where I knew I’d need to batch cocktails but I didn't know exactly what was gonna be at the liquor store when I got there. I just kind of sketched out this rough idea and came up with beets and did some quick Googling because I've had beet cocktails that can be too stringent and kind of fumy. I wanted to do an infusion as I had a couple days to kind of play around so I went out and got gin and sweet vermouth. We had honey and lemons on site already so I started a couple of different roastings. I tried raw beets and roasted beets… you know, a quick hour infusion can be enough because it changes color immediately, but there are more subtle flavor qualities that you experience after six to 12 hours. I went with slightly roasted beets - about 15 minutes - and it ended up being a fantastic cocktail.
Photo: Konrad Odhiambo/The Dishing
But this is where it got its name: The wedding was on the shore of Lake Michigan, and we're down on the beach with a fire, watching the sun set over the lake and I guess a moon set. I mean I often get to see a moonrise - that’s a more common experience - but I can't think of any time I've seen a moon set. It was gorgeous – a half moon and as its setting it's dipping behind the water. It's this beautiful starry night with a golden half moon and because of the reflection you can see the moon dripping into the lake…it only lasted for about a minute and a half, two minutes, but you could see the little drips of the moon pouring into the lake, like the most fantastic visual moon experience that I've ever had. When I got back to Hearth, I told the bar director that I came up with this really cool cocktail and I'd love to fine tune it and get it on the menu. So we finessed roasting the beets for about 15 minutes, still al dente, and that way they still have some of that like earthy, bitterness to them but it releases the flavor for a perfect balance of earthy and sweetness. If you fully roast them it gets way too sweet, and the color looks amazing, but it’s a little cloying.