The Journey to Bar Tincture

Welcome to our new blog space! This is where you can find a round-up all of the cool, interesting, fun, weird and quirky stuff that we are doing.

For our first blog post - we want to give you an insight into our journey to opening Bar Tincture and the origin of our love of seasonal, sustainable and zero waste cocktails - so we picked the brain of our very own cycling sensation Carl Anthony Brown, on his journey to opening Bar Tincture.

Where did it all begin?

Having originally been a part of the opening team for Dishoom in Covent Garden in 2010, Carl Brown started tinkering with what will become Bar Tincture’s eco conscious concept.

In 2011, Dishoom brought Bombay’s famous Chowpatty Beach to the South Bank Of London. It was built ‘Jugaad-Style’ - a style centered around resourceful improvised solutions through the re-use of items and objects. For many who have visited it, the style is unmistakable, only using what they could find including, furnishings, decorations made from old plastic bottles and even the fridges!

This gave Carl his inspiration to launch a zero waste cocktail bar in the future which, through many years of idea development, became Bar Tincture in 2020 - opening its doors in East London, two months before lockdown.

What exactly is a tincture?

The ‘tincture’ in the name comes from the name of the process of macerating berries, herbs, fruit and vegetables in alcohol, descended from apothecaries - essentially a healthy way of extracting properties from plants.

How did you go from using ‘tinctures’ as an idea to launching a Bar in Brick Lane?

Having had the word ‘tincture’ at the forefront of Carl’s mind for at least 7 years, he was elated to have the backing of Neil Rankin and the opportunity to open a site underneath the newly opened vegan restaurant - Simplicity Burger on Brick Lane The pieces were all starting to slot together and the concept was now coming to life.

Tell us more about the concept behind Bar Tincture…

What was clear in Carl Brown’s mind was he wanted to launch Bar Tincture and it was going to be zero waste - but it did not end there. Carl adapted the zero waste concept to include seasonal and sustainable elements too.

Carl identified that dividing his menu into three month periods meant that he would know what ingredients were in season and when it was going to start becoming obsolete providing a clear outline.

Carl then developed the sustainable aspect by carefully selecting his supplier choice and investigating the correct operational process to succeed. In doing so he determined that it was important was to keep things small and controlled and thus attainable.

Finally - t

he main pillar of the concept - zero waste - working to use every part of each ingredient as components for both alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails. This is the cornerstone of Bar Tincture’s concept recycling and reusing at every turn. It may be misconstrued that zero waste means you are throwing out less - right? Not necessarily - we collect everything to re-use for our tinctures!

Bar Tincture has now moved on to delivering our fresh cocktails to your door-step whilst the venue is temporarily closed. Check out our future blogs to see how we have implemented the zero waste ethos in our new venture and the fun and exciting new products that will be coming soon! https://www.bartincture.co.uk/cocktail-delivery