Shaken, Stirred or Spun?
Tired of wrecking his own kitchen, Stu Bale started Crucible, the world’s first creative hub for the drinks and flavor industry. Hear about his love of centrifuges and how zoology, accounting and improv jazz can push the boundaries of the business.
Interview By: Justin Harlow | Editor
JH: Today, I’m here with Stu Bale. Stu was the first of his family to go to university, studying dentistry at Glasgow University. Like many students, he needed to find a way to pay his way through school. So, by day he perfected his dentistry on bodies of the dead and by night he worked as a bartender. As his studies progressed, he began to realize that cocktails, not crowns were his passion. He broke the news to his parents, dropped out of university and started work as a bartender full-time. He worked his way up in the industry becoming head bartender at the award-winning cocktail bar 69 Colebrook Row in Islington, London before joining creative agency Strange Hill as a bar consultant.
He left Strange Hill to start his own consultancy where he ramped up his experimentation. It was the destruction of his own kitchen coupled with a visit to an artist hackspace that would provide the inspiration for the Crucible. And last year, Stu plowed his life savings into starting the world’s first creative hub for the drinks and flavor industry. It’s a place to share ideas, learn new techniques and use equipment usually beyond the reach of your average bartender. Think rotavapors, dehydrators and centrifuges rather than jiggers and shakers. A true melting point where art and science collide. Future plans involve a global network of creative hubs that promote cross-discipline and cross-cultural collaboration.
Stu, it’s great to have you with us today.
SB: It’s good to speak to you Justin, I feel very privileged.
JH: So, let’s start with dentistry, just to give our listeners an idea of where you come from. Why did you decided to study that?
SB: It sounds kind of weird, but I always wanted to be a dentist from as young as I can remember. From when I was 5 or 6 years old, it was what I always wanted to do. I did my work experience with my dentist. I was doing work experience at the dental technicians. I really liked the idea of being able to change peoples’ lives. If your teeth are giving you trouble of giving you pain or they look horrendous, it can really affect your life. I liked the idea of helping people if that makes sense.
There’s a kind of creative element when you’re sculpting someone’s mouth. I really enjoyed that side of it. The side of it that was one of the main issues for me was inflicting pain. I really struggled with the act of inflicting pain. The rest of the class would have a sweepstake on how long it would take to feint. I didn’t really have the stomach for it, especially practicing on dead people who are cut in half long ways so you have easier access to the month. Those bits were not what I signed up for.
JH: You also had to pay your way through university and started as a bar tender. Where did you get your first start as a bartender?
SB: I actually worked my 18th birthday as a bartender. I started as a glass collector when I was 16. I was doing that and I really enjoyed the buzz of it. It was in a bar/nightclub/restaurant, it was quite a big venue. When I was cleaning the glasses, I started throwing about the bottles before I put them in the bin to make it more interesting. I was getting quite good at throwing bottles about.
At that time in Scotland, there was a big events agency that was doing events like the MTV Awards in Scotland and they were the top of the industry. I approached them to ask them if I could be their bar-back glass collector with the view to learning more. Those guys really took me under their wing and trained me up on cocktails when they really shouldn’t have been. But, I just got the bug and I worked my eighteenth birthday party.
JH: At some stage, you decide that you want to make bartending your full-time occupation and that you wanted to drop out of university. How did you tell your parents about that and how did they react?
SB: I can’t actually remember the specifics, it wasn’t particularly pleasant. Basically, I moved to Edinburgh after I told them. It wasn’t that great to be around at that time. I was going through a bit of a wild-child phase as well, so it was just better to give them a bit of time to calm down more than anything.
JH: Have they calmed down yet?
SB: They’re pretty chill now, yeah. They were both teachers. It was difficult, they were very proud that I was the first person in my family to go to university and then I left.
JH: Tell us about the rest of your work behind the bar. So, you move to Edinburgh and I believe you moved to London thereafter. Give me an idea of the type of work you did and places you worked at.
SB: I was working in party bars in Edinburgh and I ended up being manager of some fun bars. For one reason or another, I moved down to London. It must have been about 9 years ago now. I was an Assistant Manager at a big Scottish-themed bar right on Trafalgar House. That bar had a tradition as a holding pen for Scottish bartenders who had moved from Scotland to London. They would work there for a bit and find their feet in the city and then go on to get another job.
I was lucky. I sent Tony C, who owns 69 Colebrooke Row a letter when he was opening and started as head bartender there. That was great. When we started there just three people who worked there, Tony the owner, Kim the waitress and me behind the bar. Now, there’s 8 or 9 people working there. It’s a small little bar, but there was a level of detail and a meticulousness to everything. Every single ingredient was considered and designed with a purpose. It can be quite easy to bamboozle guests with what’s going on behind the scenes, but it was very much about what goes on behind the scenes stays behind the scenes and all the guest got was a delicious drink.
..if you want to record an album, you wouldn’t buy a recording studio, you would go and use the best setup you could and interact with the best people.
JH: Then you step away from the world of bartending to join the creative agency Strange Hill, tell us about your work there.
SB: So, Strange Hill was really interesting for me. Initially I worked mainly with Nick Strangeway, Henry Besant and Cairbry Hill. They were three directors of the company and brought different assets to the company. I was working on a mixture of product development. We made 3 flavors for Absolut Vodka, which was great, distilling different things every day and then trying to blend them together. It was really great to see them end up on the shelves. It was crazy. It was a very limited edition run, but in the two weeks after they were released they were selling on the black market for about a thousand pounds a bottle.
There were two aspects to my work at Strange Hill, the bar side, setting up new bars — whether that was designing the bar, hiring the staff, training the staff or writing the cocktail menus. Then there was also writing training programs for large drinks brands, such as writing the global education program for Havana Club or writing all of the training for Diageo World Class.
After two years at Strange Hill, another director joined the company, Craig Lancaster. He was formerly the Creative Director at Esquire magazine, so he brought a totally different dynamic to the business. It was a bit weird at first because we were all working in the drinks industry. When we got somebody in from a different industry, it showed me the potential of learning from other industries. To be honest, it completely changed how I work, it was very influential for me.
JH: That’s great and we’ll explore that a little bit more in a few minutes. I want to move on to Crucible now, which is your new venture. So, a trip to an artists’ hackspace and frustrations with experimenting in your kitchen provided the inspiration for that venture. Tell us a little about those motivations.
SB: As you said, I was getting frustrated and I was becoming limited by what I could produce in my kitchen. It’s just not built for that. When I saw this hackspace, things just started to fall into place in my head. It’s an analogy, I’ve used a few times — if you want to record an album, you wouldn’t buy a recording studio, you would go and use the best setup you could and interact with the best people. I realized that there wasn’t anything like that for the drinks and flavor industry. Even if you’re trying to get creative in the bar you work in, there’s always going to be distractions. The toilet’s going to be blocked, you’re going to have to open the bar, you don’t actually get peace and quiet to be creative. I think that the Crucible provides that…away from the real world.
JH: Describe the space and a usual day there.
SB: It’s split over 2 floors. On the ground floor, we’ve got a bar for people to make drinks, a meeting room that holds 10 people that can also be a quiet work space if there are no meetings. Outside the meeting room you have hot desks and a small kitchen. There’s always music playing, normally quite upbeat, I really like techno, it helps work get done quicker. There’s also a library downstairs which helps for research. I have a lot of Brand Ambassadors that are members so rather than working from home or working from a coffee shop, they’re coming down and working in this creative environment. Upstairs, we have the lab, that’s where all the toys and the fun equipment is.
JH: Let’s talk about that equipment. It sounds more like a science fiction movie than anything else. It’s not the type of equipment you would normally associate with cocktail bartending. Give us an idea of some of the equipment you have and what it’s actually used for.
SB: The one I like talking about is the Rotavap, that basically distills things under vacuum. You couldn’t make a cup of tea at the top of Mount Everest due to the air pressure being too low so the water would boil around 70 degrees. You wouldn’t be able to get the flavor extraction into the water. This distillation kit is a sealed vacuum and you distill by the pressure so if you’re using delicate fruit and herbs, you can keep the temperature down to 30 or 40 degrees and get really accurate flavors as nature would intend. In the real world, they’re generally used for distilling fractions out of petrochemicals and things like that.
We’ve also got a centrifuge that spins 80 times a second, that’s the one that terrifies me a bit. If that goes wrong, it’s going to be a bit of a mess. That separates things out with density. It’s really interesting to blend fruit with spirits and then spin that out so you get left with the bright fresh flavor of the fruit, but none of the debris.
We’ve also got a centrifuge that spins 80 times a second, that’s the one that terrifies me a bit. If that goes wrong, it’s going to be a bit of a mess.
JH: So, what type of concoctions can you develop at Crucible that are beyond the means of a standard bar? Give us a specific idea of a cocktail that you could create with that equipment that you would never be able to do in a conventional setting.
SB: The one that I was playing about with last week, do you guys have Capri-Suns in America?
JH: I know what they are because I grew up in the UK, we have the equivalent.
SB: I stuck a load of Capri-Suns through the Rotavap and basically took all the water out and had this really concentrated Capri-Sun syrup and started making margaritas with it. We had to bump the acidity up a little bit because it was really sweet syrup. Mixing tequila with Capri-Sun syrup was last week’s fun.
JH: Capri-Sun almost goes into the Um Bongo world of drinks.
SB: It totally does. We were looking at Um Bongo, it’s a bit harder to find.
JH: I don’t even know if it’s still made, but that would be interesting to do.
SB: They’ve got some really good t-shirts. We couldn’t find Um Bongo, but we found lots of good Um Bongo clothes.
JH: So, people in the drinks business tend to be a little secretive about their ideas and it seems like you’re coming up with some really cool innovative stuff. Are people collaborating or are they using the equipment to come up with ideas and keeping them close to their chest? How does that dynamic work in your space?
SB: I think the drinks industry is often guilty of playing catch-up with other industries. It has kind of always followed kitchen trends to some extent. When the chefs started using foams and airs in places like El Bulli, a couple of years later the bars started messing around with these kind of techniques.
I’m sure you’ll agree with me, in other industries, there has been a move towards open-sourcing, particularly in the tech world, and the sharing of ideas and the idea that if everyone gets together we can get to a better place quicker. You’re definitely right that it used to be that we kept out cards close to our chest and be a little bit secretive, but it definitely moving towards more collaboration and open-sourcing.
JH: It’s interesting what you said before about learning from different industries. In my other day job, I run innovation popup labs all over the world, often in conservative locations, where there’s not a lot of trust, where people don’t want to share anything. One thing that I’ve really noticed in my work is that if you bring people together from different disciplines, they’re more likely to share and collaborate because the ideas aren’t that useful for them. If you’re a nuclear physicist helping somebody design a cocktail, you’re going to give them your best ideas, because what the hell are you going to do with them anyway. Do you have plans to bring in different people from different disciplines to inspire creativity in your space?
SB: Yeah, already with the membership we have chefs that are members, we have PR companies, we have Brand Ambassadors, we have one girl that’s making handsoap and cosmetics, but they’re generally flavor-led industries. It would be great to start getting more people from other industries in.
You can age cocktails and that’s a complex reaction between oxidation and basic collision theory — you can heat things up and accelerate the ageing.
JH: You mentioned in another interview and you alluded to it earlier today, about the desire to learn from different industries. The one you mentioned, which I brought up before, is nuclear physics. What I’d like to do now is almost simulate what that interaction could look like and how it could help with the creative capacity of Crucible and the people there.
SB: This sounds quite cool.
JH: I picked four industries at random and I’ll give you a little bit of an idea on how I think about things and each time I’ll hand the mic back to you so to speak and I’d love to hear your take.
So, let’s start with the one we already mentioned, nuclear physics. So, in nuclear physics, one of the concepts is radiocarbon dating, determining the age of material. And I thought, how could that relate to the world of cocktails? I know how it relates to the world of scotch, where determining the age of the scotch or the aging process is important. What about a cocktail where age is important? So, maybe it’s a multi-layered cocktail with fresh fruit that’s a week old at the top with multiple layers and eventually you end up with scotch at the bottom which is 25 years old. How do you think a nuclear physicist could influence what you do at Crucible?
SB: It’s interesting that you mentioned age there, because the aging process is a really complex reaction that people have struggled to get to the bottom of what’s going on there. You can age cocktails and that’s a complex reaction between oxidation and basic collision theory — you can heat things up and accelerate the ageing. If you were able to speak with a nuclear physicist, you could work out what exactly was going on with ageing on an atomic level.
JH: Alright, the second one, zoology. One of the key concepts associated with zoology is evolution. When I think about cocktails and how they evolve over time, to me they really decay. If you think about a champagne-based cocktail, it loses it fizz. If you think about a cocktail on the rocks, the ice melts and it dilutes the drink. Maybe, there are ways in which a cocktail could improve over time. I think of how an Alka-Seltzer works, where if you drop it in a drink over time it would increase its effervescence. Is there any way you think where drinks can improve over time? Are there any techniques that I’m completely oblivious to?
SB: It kind of goes back to what I said before about the aging cocktails. The best analogy is like a house party. When you add the ingredients together, it’s kind of awkward, everybody’s jostling for position a wee bit and then after time the party becomes a bit more relaxed, everyone is integrated and the flavors are integrated. Now, what you can find when you age cocktails is it gets towards the tail end of the party where you need to get rid of everyone because the bottom has fallen out of it.
What would be interesting for me in speaking with a zoologist relates to a perfume tangent that I went down a few years ago. I started reading loads about perfumery. There are some really aromatic bits of animals. You’ve got the musk deer. One of my favorite ones is ambergris, which is some kind of digestive secretion from sperm whales. I’d really like to speak with a zoologist, but it might go against their nature I suppose if I’m asking which bits taste good. Yeah, that would be interesting.
JH: Talking about interesting, let’s move on to the world of accounting. There are regulations in accounting called GAAP, which stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. I was thinking about cocktails with four ingredients that would start with G, A, A and P. Obviously, G for gin was the first thing I thought of. Do you have any ideas on that or any other ideas that you could learn from an accountant?
SB: I mean these guys or girls are really hot on numbers and formulas. It could be really interesting. All cocktails come back to that sweet and sour balance. If there could be some kind of formula, the recipe could be built by the spreadsheet. That might kind of take the fun out of it.
JH: It’s almost like an optimization algorithm.
SB: Yeah, something like that.
JH: And then the last one is improv jazz. Based on research, one thing that stood out for me was the importance of the 2–5–1 chord progression and I thought about 3 ingredient drinks that have measurements in those ratios.
SB: I mean with a 2–5–1, a daiquiri wouldn’t be too far off that if you had lime juice being the 2, rum being the 5 and 1 being the sugar. I was reading a lot about rhythm yesterday. I did an event about four years ago in Washington DC at the NASA Museum, it was one of the after-parties for TED. We composed a piece of music where different flavors corresponded to different musical notes. I was talking about doing something like that quite recently actually, having a DJ and a bar and going head to head. I would make a drink and he would put on a song that he thought the drink tasted like and then he would play a song and I would make a drink, that could work with jazz as well.
JH: It’s interesting. You see cocktails that are designed with respect to eh general ambience of the place, but you don’t see them change dynamically with what is being played at the time. That would be pretty cool.
SB: Yeah, or it might not work at all, that’s the beauty of it.
JH: Exactly. So, coming back to the Crucible. What are your plans for the future? Any new equipment that you’ve got your eyes on? Different clientele? Different events? New locations? What does the next year or two look like for you guys?
SB: I’m passionately reinvesting as much as I can into new equipment. Hopefully, by the time we’re finished, I should have an ultrasonic waterbath to play with. I should also have a homogenizer coming. The one I really want is a freeze drier, but that’s twelve grand, so that’s like phase two. The way I see Crucible expanding is that I’m encouraging people to open up these spaces around the world. I’ve accepted that I can’t be everywhere all of the time. I want to create that network of people. With my members at Crucible, I want that to become a pool of talent that I can use to grow the consultancy aspect of the business. I did that for four or five years and I’m still doing that now.
JH: Well Stu, it’s an incredible venture. It’s great that you’re giving people access to this equipment that will allow people to ramp up their creativity.
SB: Yeah, I kind of see it like that. It’s kind of leveling the playing field because some of the top-end bars have this equipment, but in my experience some of the most creative people aren’t necessarily the most stable people. If you look at someone like Vincent van Gogh, can you imagine trying to employ him? It’s giving these creative people access to things and seeing what comes out the other end.
JH: I hope nobody blows up your facility.
SB: I’ve never had so much insurance in my life.
JH: Thanks very much for your time today, this has been fascinating.
SB: Brilliant, cheers Justin.
JH: All the best, take care.
