Serious Eats Goes On A Malort Crawl
By Anthony Todd in Food on May 16, 2013 3:10PM
Photo by Sarah Freeman.
For some, malort is a bad punchline. For others, it's a torture device. For Serious Eats Chicago, it's an honorable and under-appreciated beverage. They went on a Malort crawl (When was the last time you went on a Malort crawl?), drank some great malort cocktails, learned the history of the strange beverage and, miracle of miracles, found out that they they actually liked the stuff.
Chicagoist weekend editor (and Serious Eats foodie) Amy Cavanaugh wrote up this momentous occasion for SE:C, and dragged our cocktail correspondant Paul Leddy and former Chicagoista Sarah Freeman along with them. It's one big -ist party up in that Malort bottle!
First up, why is it called Jeppson's Malort? Cavanaugh asked the owner of the Carl Jeppson Company, Pat Gabelick.
"There was a man named Carl Jeppson who brought the recipe to George [Brode, owner of a liquor company]," Gabelick said. "Carl went up and down Clark Street with a bottle, stopped in bars and poured shots for people, and began to market it. They had no connection to each other, except George owned a distillery and Carl wanted to sell his recipe."
It's not even made in Chicago.
The company moved production to Florida in the 1980s, since there were no distilleries left in Chicago. They briefly made Jeppson's in Kentucky, before starting at Florida Distillers in 1989. Despite the move, Jeppson's is still only sold in Chicago and around the suburbs.
And you can get interesting concoctions made with it at Bar Deville, Trencherman and The Violet Hour. Check out the whole crawl for yourself. Anybody up for a rematch?