What It Really Takes to Make a Cocktail Completely From Scratch

In the age of Google search, every bar is battling to get to the top. To do it, they load their sites with certain key terms: craft cocktail, speakeasy, best bar in Omaha. The problem is, a lot of programs using those words aren’t actually delivering on them.

House-made tequila and tonic, crafted from scratch at Anna’s Place in downtown Omaha.

Take “speakeasy,” for example. There’s a bar in town that claims to be one — but it’s only a speakeasy one or two nights a week, and it doesn’t even have a roof. I’m sorry, but that’s not a speakeasy.

Same goes for “craft cocktails.” You can have a cocktail program, but that doesn’t mean you’re craft. You can be pulling bottles off the shelf all night long, but that doesn’t make it craft. We’ve run that word into the ground so hard it’s practically lost meaning.

That’s why Anna’s Place has started referring to ourselves as a from scratch bar program.

From Scratch Means Intentional

We make as much as we can in-house. Not for show, not for Instagram, but because it changes the drink. We don’t have a soda gun behind the bar — on purpose. That doesn’t mean we don’t have cola. We make it, bottle it, and have it ready.

We infuse spirits for specific drinks, not as a generic replacement for something mass-produced. A good example is our coconut rum. It’s infused with a certain cocktail in mind, and we only make enough to support that drink. So no, you can’t get it with our cola just to make a Malibu and Coke — because if we served what everyone else serves, we’d stop being different.

We’re here for people looking for something new. Something they can’t get anywhere else.

Some Good Things Just Take Time

Restaurants know some things can’t be rushed. You don’t marinate chicken for five minutes and expect flavor. Cocktails are the same way.

Recently, I was making a house amaro. I had a great blend of herbs and spices, balanced like perfume. But on day one, it tasted flat. The alcohol was too sharp, and the subtle notes were buried. So I walked away.

The next day, those harsh ethanol vapors had mellowed, and the beauty of the herbs and spices came forward.

This is the part people never see. Bartending is what happens in front of the guest. The so-called “mixology” — a word that actually started as an insult in the 1800s — happens in the back room, with scales, calculators, and metric units. Up front I work in ounces; in the back, it’s grams.

That’s the difference between a drink made for speed and a drink built from the ground up.

The Vibe Is Part of the Recipe

I love the drinks — they’re why I’m in this industry — but the room itself changes the experience.

When people ask where else to go, I don’t just tell them who has a good drink. I ask what vibe they want: dark nightclub? Dance floor? Hipster brunch?

Anna’s Place is intentional. Low lights, mostly red. Bass-heavy music you feel more than hear. It’s a conversational space, where you can actually talk to the person across from you. Some of history’s best ideas were born in a bar conversation, and we’d love to be part of that.

We have rules so people can enjoy the room the way it was meant to be enjoyed. It’s not to be boring — it’s so your evening doesn’t get hijacked by someone else’s bad night.

Heat With Restraint

One of the newer spices I’ve been working with is long pepper, part of the black peppercorn family. We put a drink on the menu called Spicy Lemon. It’s basically a 7UP with a slow-building heat — no jalapeños, no gimmicks. The only way to cool it is to take another drink, so you end up in a loop.

It’s refreshing like a Moscow Mule without being one. We don’t make ginger beer because we’re not here to push Mules. We want to give people a different experience.

People like it enough to take it home — Nebraska allows cocktails to go, so I seal them in bottles. It’s satisfying knowing a drink connects enough for someone to carry it out with them.

Why the Parties Matter

If this sounds like your kind of thing, come to one of our cocktail parties at the end of the month. That’s when we introduce new drinks, explain the inspiration, tell the ingredient stories, and you get to talk to the person who designed it.

That’s not something you can get on just any Friday or Saturday night at most bars in downtown Omaha.

From scratch isn’t a tagline here — it’s how we work. And if you’re looking for the best cocktails in Omaha, the ones you can’t find anywhere else, you’ll find them in our hidden speakeasy.