Drink Tank: The Bitter Southerner Edition

Drink Tank is a week-in-the-life peek at creative drinkers across Instagram. Each week PUNCH follows a photographer, writer, winemaker or bartender from bar to bar to bar.

Jerry Slater whiskey cocktail atlanta

Atlanta bartender Jerry Slater (of H. Harper Station) makes the first official Bitter Southerner cocktail—a mix of bourbon, Fernet, whiskey bitters and sorghum.

daiquiri cocktail bitter southerner paul calvert

Bartender Paul Calvert of Decatur, Georgia’s Paper Plane shows off some perfect Daiquiri froth during a backyard drink session organized by BS.

mint julep cocktail

Bitter Southerner is all about the South. So, you know, juleps. Lots of them. This one from Atlanta bartenders Greg Best and Jerry Slater.

whiskey and bitters amaro cocktail bitter southerner

The third in the Bitter Southerner original cocktail series, this one—a mix of Gran Classico, Peychaud's, Cynar, Carpano, and rye—from Paul Calvert of Paper Plane.

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BS has initiated the Y'all Come campaign to uphold its belief in claiming Southern identity through written and visual documentation. #yallcome

If you’re a Southerner you should be reading The Bitter Southerner. And if you’re not a Southerner, but appreciate good journalism, you should be reading The Bitter Southerner.

One year old this week, BS is a young Atlanta-based web magazine that publishes one long form piece each week about some odd corner of Southern culture—from profiles of Atlanta strippers to a photo essay and love letter to the hills of Appalachia and its inhabitants.

In honor of its one-year anniversary BS is fundraising in order to continue its mission of differentiating the South from Southern stereotypes:

The reality is that we have—over the last three or so decades—allowed “the South” to become defined in extraordinarily narrow terms. We wish the Thompson and Robinson families well, but the sparkly pinks of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and the olive drabs of Duck Dynasty are not the only colors on the Southern palette.

With the goal of paying their writers and themselves, BS has initiated the Y’all Come campaign to uphold its belief in claiming Southern identity through written and visual documentation. In the process they’re always inspired by a drink or two. Over the course of the week, BS visited its favorite Atlanta bars including cocktail bar Paper Plane and local favorite H. Harper Station in the name of incubating good, honest, Southern business. We followed them there and through their beautifully curated Bitter Southerner cocktail series to drink Daiquiris, crush Mint Juleps and raise the barn for the next year to come.

#drinktank #YALLCOME