The Union Station in Oakland featured the first elevated train tracks west of the Mississippi, among other notable firsts as the terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Now I get why this grand venue, now called the 16th Street Station, recently hosted an elaborate, over-the-top installation by Bulleit Whiskey, one of Diageo‘s brands (which I also learned includes Don Julio tequila!)
Baby’s First 3D Printed Cocktail Bar
Bulleit Frontier Whiskey is undertaking “cultural partnerships” as part of what it calls its Frontier Works program, an interesting and very spendy way to build its image as a pioneering whiskey brand.
The 3D printed bar, inspired by the iconic Bulleit Bourbon label and award-winning whiskey, was designed by the architecture and design practice FAR frohn&rojas, and fabricated by the Machine Histories team. The bar will ultimately land at The Bulleit Distilling Co. in Shelbyville, Kentucky but will roadtrip to a few other cocktail hot spots around the country.
This 30ft long x 14ft high 3D-printed bar was fully 3D printed, with each piece being printed then assembled. What’s cool is that the pieces were coded so they could be snapped together.Dubbed The 3D Printed Frontier, the bar came to life at an event featuring national and Oakland-based designers, musicians, mixologists, techies and more.
3D Printed Cocktail Infusions
While the cocktails made with Bulleit by local mixologists Elmer Mejicanos and Benjamin Grimeil were pretty amazing (including the one with the edible rice paper message on the cocktail shown below), a real highlight was seeing the Print-a-Drink 3D printer that a couple of Austrian fellows conceived of only a few years earlier in school.
The inclusions can have any flavor but need to be compatible with the contents and viscosity of the liquid in which they suspend.
I won’t pretend to be an expert but their Print a Drink product is worth checking out.
We were all amazed by Print a Drink, a 3D printer a team in Austria, that dropped each of these little capsules of flavor into this drink.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrExrlFBo4d/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
The printed rice paper on a cocktail is a cute idea, reminiscent of a printer that was at the Fancy Food Show that was transferring people’s photos on to latte foam.
More about Bulleit’s FrontierWorks program and the 3D printed bar and entertainment roadshow
p.s…..
It was so recently that this 3D printed sugar candy seemed like a revolutionary development. Today it almost seems quaint!
