Suburban bars mix up scary sippers for Halloween

Candy might be the most common Halloween treat, but grown-ups can savor the season too with spirited cocktails. Local bars are celebrating all weekend by mixing up some spooky sippers, drawing inspiration from seasonal flavors and the holiday's scarier themes.

Copper Fiddle Distillery in Lake Zurich dares drinkers to order For the Love of Hades ($8), which it added to the menu on Oct. 22. Bartenders start by shaking their house-made gin, simple syrup and a bit of orange juice with ice, and then pouring the mix into a martini glass with grenadine at the bottom to create the color of blood. Bartender Ron Roberti says he then adds some heat to make patrons feel like they're descending into the underworld, lighting the distillery's spicy roasted serrano pepper gin on fire and pouring it on top.

“People love it,” he said. “That's the difference between being a shot-and-a-beer-pourer and a bartender. You kind of work the crowd when you're behind the bar.”

Instead of using fire, Primo in Gurnee gets its exciting visuals by adding dry ice to the Spooky Smoking Sangria, a blend of cinnamon vodka, caramel vodka, apple cider, apple chutney and a cinnamon stick served in a copper mug.

“All of our bartenders are wildly talented,” said co-owner Nicole Khayat. “We kind of give them free rein to express their creativity and this is what they collaborated with and came up with. It's unique and exciting when it comes to the table. We like that shock and awe factor with everything that do.”

Part of the restaurant's fall drink menu, the cocktail launches this weekend and will be priced at $6 through Monday, going up to $8 after that so you can still get a bit of spooky spirit through January.

Niya Beraha, food and beverage manager at El Tapeo in Oak Brook, based her Halloween cocktail on one of her favorite TV shows: “Game of Thrones.” The Mother of Dragons, which is available through the first week of November, blends citrus vodka, crème de cacao, rhubarb liqueur, dragon fruit and almond milk.

“Halloween is a time where everybody likes to dress up,” she said. “I think 'Game of Thrones' is pretty popular and I thought this will be perfect. It's light and refreshing and the dragon fruit kind of bleeds into and gives it an eerie component.”

Beraha said she enjoys the chance to experiment on a themed drink, even if it doesn't always work the way you want. An earlier version of the cocktail used an herbal liqueur and, while Beraha loved it, she thought it wouldn't suit most peoples' palates.

“It was a bit of trial and error. Once you have an idea of how you want something to look like, you walk into the kitchen and start browsing around and think 'What looks gory?'”

McQ's Bar & Grill in Bolingbrook rolled out the $9 Drunken Pumpkin at the beginning of October. A blend of Captain Morgan spiced rum, Jose Cuervo tequila, orange juice, blood orange bitters, pumpkin syrup and New Holland Brewing's Ichabod pumpkin ale, the cocktail is topped with whipped cream and garnished with a slice or orange, cinnamon and a cinnamon stick.

“We needed something that kept you warm, something that was spicy as well,” said food and beverage director Jim Koklas. “If you've had pumpkin beer, it's pumpkin beer with a little twist. It's alcoholic, but it's not going to hit you so hard like a vodka cranberry.”

Koklas said he didn't want to make their Halloween cocktail too strong. Making the pumpkin beer a main component helped McQ's achieve the goal while showing off what the bar is known for.

“We have a very extensive craft beer list at McQ's, so we thought incorporating beer and going with the beer cocktail trend would differentiate us from other bars,” Koklas said. “The craft beer trend is hot, but not a lot of places do beer cocktails. We let the pumpkin beer do a lot of the talking.”

At Punch Bowl Social in Schaumburg, Halloween provided the opportunity to experiment with new ingredients. The bar had never used pumpkin juice in its drinks until it launched the Pumpkin Spiced Libation ($6) in October, which also incorporates an allspice dram that is featured on the new drink menu, plus Old Forester bourbon, apple juice and house-made citrus syrup.

“With the allspice dram you get that smell of cinnamon and nutmeg and it really brings out the flavor,” said bar manager Blake Faircloth. “The pumpkin juice is naturally sweet, and you've got that really nice flavor of bourbon on the backside. You have this really intricate flavor profile. It tastes like fall.”