American Royal Mint

A classic mint julep recipe from Tales of the Cocktail, bring your own tale

A big wooden Maker’s Mark mallet and a burlap sack with a mint julep recipe on it awaited attendees as did mixologist Jared Plummer, a brand ambassador for Maker’s Mark and the American Whiskey industry, who moderated the session with panelists Dylan Howarth and Jason Crawley in a ballroom at The Royal Sonesta.

Howarth manages Coca Cola Amatil’s Mixxit program and creates advertorials for the national trade press and speaks at trade events. Crawley developed a cult following, according to Tales, for his monthly contributions to trade and news publications. He works as creative director for MIXXIT and is the national business manager for customer education for CCA. All three live in Australia.

The session description said that they would “explore the Julep’s Persian roots, through to post Civil War and into the modern day.” Crawley kicked these off in 50,000 B.C. Yes, really.

As we sipped a Maker’s Mark milk punch, “with a little bit of rose water, saffron, cardamom…” Crawley began his history lesson. He started with cavemen (!). I got nervous, but wait a minute, Crawley is funny. His Power Point is funny. Cute accent doesn't hurt either.

“We are going to talk about drinks in a minute,” Crawley said as he continued through the pyramids (“the Egyptians had 17 beers… and this is all 3,000 years ago”), Cyrus the Great (“I’m getting to a point. Please bear with me.”), the birth of the modern park in Persia, roses being grown for health tonics or gulab (the precursor to the julep?) health tonics, Al Jabir and Al Kindi (“first to distill”), the first pharmacy in the world in Florence, 1603 the “pilgrim father’s set sail.”

All that is to say people were starting to move about the world and learn to use plants in distillation.

As a classic mint julep is passed out, Howarth takes over, flashing more amusing slides up as he recounted the settling of America in four sentences, horses become commonplace, herb gardens take off including the growth of roses and mint (“the hospitality herb”), the American quarter horse and racing take off. He’s funny, too.

Plummer keeps the pace up with “the mint julep cup as you know it” and we sip the final mint julep made with Marker’s 46 (my favorite of the three.

Silver Bullion: How to Avoid Buying Fake Silver like These ...

@imatelly I’m sorry I used the word “oxidization” in my comment and in the video. I was mistaken; neither gold nor silver oxidizes. Silver tarnishes, and if I am not mistaken gold does not tarnish, but it can change colors over time. Some gold coins can rust because they are alloyed with other metals. That is definitely not the gold rusting.

U do know that silver oxidized through sulfur,and silver can turn meny dif colors depending on what u do to it,also old coins found in the ground after hundreds of years are black,also gold minted in central banks have started to rust,so no matter what u do,get nitric acid and test it like a pawn shop would or use a metal detector on your silver,conductivity is the easiest way of knowing whats real,also 1964 quarters are only 90% silver

@ThErEdPiLl09 It is a fake in that some people assume that it is a 1-oz bar of .999 silver, when in actuality it only contains .03 troy ounces of silver. Just because it says “.999 Silver” somewhere on the bar doesn’t mean that it is. If you are going to buy another bar like this make sure that you are only paying for .03 troy ounces of silver instead of a full ounce of silver.

@bufflekill1 Hi. I don’t want to say that you got “fooled” because I am not sure. I assume that these bars are made of mostly silver, but from my experience I can’t say they are .999 silver. I’ve seen a number of Hamilton products other than these bars and they have turned milky white after the heat treat, but these 1-oz bars always seem to turn colors. I can’t find anything about this mint online. I have seen a lot of their products, but nothing about them as a company. Have you found anything?

@astainless You are right in that I am only doing one test to test this metal, whereas multiple tests are ideal. What I am testing for is 999 purity. I am familiar with the way silver tarnishes over time. I have put large and small bars and rounds in the furnace that are almost completely black from tarnishing, and watched them come out being completely white. I assume that these bars contain silver, but I won’t guess what percentage…

Are you just going by color? It seems like it with the bars. If you check out older silver and even more modern ASE coins that are .999, silver tends to tone in color if it is not encapsulated. Those Ike bars weight out the right weight as you say but are not silver because the color is wrong? Silver will tone from anything from heat to sitting in an old wood box. Just sticking it in an oven is not a guarantee it is not .999 silver because the color is a little off. You should use the acid test.

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