Up your cocktail game and create unique new tastes with a red-hot food-grade stainless-steel bar tool. Heat, plunge, and enjoy!
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Up your cocktail game and create unique new tastes with a red-hot food-grade stainless-steel bar tool. Heat, plunge, and enjoy!
About this project
Introducing the Loggerhead
The loggerhead is a unique bar tool that's simple in design, yet has an effect on cocktails that's complex and incomparable. This essential piece of barware has a place at every hearth, creating flavors missing for the last two centuries.
The History of the Loggerhead
The most popular drink in Colonial American taverns was the rum flip, and we think it's time for a comeback. This delectable concoction combined rum, stout beer, a sweetener such as molasses or sorghum, and heat. The heat was applied using a loggerhead, a metal tool with its end kept red hot in the fireplace until needed. Once the loggerhead was plunged into the drink all manner of tasty chemistry ensued and patrons were left with a delicious beverage to warm them on cold nights.
Occasionally, rowdy tavern-goers would brandish the tool at each other in a heated debate, giving rise to the term "to be at loggerheads."
Using the Loggerhead
Preparing drinks with the loggerhead requires a little planning ahead—and the results are well worth the wait.
First, heat the loggerhead in whatever way works best for you: in a fireplace or campfire, over a gas stove, or with a torch. The hotter the loggerhead, the better.
While the loggerhead is heating, prepare your drink in an oversized container. You need the room as things will get exciting.
Remove the loggerhead from the heat and plunge it into your drink. Watch as your drink erupts in steam, bubbles, and frothy foam. You're not merely heating the cocktail, you're altering its chemistry as the sugars are caramelized and some of the alcohol burns off. The difference between this and other heated drinks is like the difference between cooking a steak on the grill or just using a microwave.
Finally, pour the drink into your glass and enjoy.
Developing Our Loggerhead
After reading about loggerheads in a history book, we made our first in the fall of 2015 from stainless steel and a handle of scrap wood. It tested to resounding success on a cold Wyoming autumn night.
Since then, we built and tested additional models with different sized and shaped heads, different length shafts, and different handle profiles in order to find the best combination of utility, production efficiency, safety, and beauty.
What's Included
Every loggerhead ordered includes:
- a loggerhead
- a stainless-steel stand
- a recipe booklet and guide to using the loggerhead
If you'd like to support at a different level, you can order a set of mugs etched with a loggerhead logo, or you can order the recipe booklet alone.
You can also back this project at the deluxe level and get a set of mugs included with your loggerhead.
Our goal is to have all rewards delivered by Christmas of 2016, just in time for gift giving.
Technical Details
While traditional loggerheads were made of rough iron, we modernized our design with safety and beauty in mind.
The head is constructed from a piece of food-grade stainless steel weighing over half a pound which is then welded to a stainless steel shaft.
The handle, available in walnut or maple, is hand-finished in oil and includes a leather loop for convenient hanging. After testing multiple sizes and shapes, we decided on the square profile to provide the highest stability whether heating in the fire, resting in your hand, or cooling on the counter.
To hold the loggerhead while heating or at rest, we designed a simple stand also crafted from stainless steel. It keeps the heated end of the loggerhead in place and off your counter tops.
SPECIFICATIONS
- 20" overall length
- 1.25" diameter head
- 1.5" long head
- 13" stainless steel shaft
- 5" long handle, 1.25" wide
Production Process
We begin with a rod of 304-grade stainless steel and turn it on a lathe to finish the ends and round the edges.
After that, the shaft is welded to the cylindrical head. For this step, we partnered with a professional team with experience in sanitary, food-grade welding.
We cut the handles from either walnut or maple, round the edges for comfort, drill a hole for the hanging loop, a second hole for the shaft, sand them, and hand-apply an oil finish.
It's important to us to deliver these to you by the holidays so depending on the number of orders, we'll either do the woodworking of the handle ourselves or partner with a local fabrication team.
Finally, the handle is attached to the steel shaft with high-strength epoxy, the hanging loop is tied, and your loggerhead is boxed and sent on its way, ready to help you explore new—or old—frontiers in cocktails.
Stretch Goal #1: Cherry Handles
If we reach $5000 in funding, we'll be able to add cherry to the types of wood you can choose for a handle. You can see the entire family below.
Why We Need Your Help
In all manufacturing, there are discounts for larger quantities. With guaranteed orders at these quantities, we'll be able to keep the price low and create supply chains allowing us to put loggerheads on store shelves around the world.
Risks and challenges
We have our design finalized, materials lined up, partnerships formed, and a solid production plan in place. Potential risks include having to find a new source of materials or a new fabrication team, but either problem can be quickly resolved.
If we're lucky enough that the project is more successful than anticipated, there isn't any step of the manufacturing process that can't be easily scaled up to match demand.
Thank you for your support. We're looking forward to raising a warm glass to each and every one of you.
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