BY STU BALE
In the summer of 2020, we actually had a bit of a stroke of luck. Like so many other small businesses in the pandemic, we had a dickhead landlord who wanted full payment every month, even though nobody could come in and all of our revenue streams had dried up. The stroke of luck was that our lease was up in July, so we were able to leave. If we’d had to stay there much longer, Crucible would have been done as we were hemorrhaging cash at a wonderful rate.
I started looking for storage units to put all of the bits in until the storm passed and we could re-start somewhere fresh. As it actually turned out, storage units in London, of the size I needed weren’t as cheap as I had hoped…
However, one of the buildings I went to see a storage unit in, had this big blank space room – by chance I saw it was empty. It had no electricity and no running water – it was a shell. But I loved it, and it was only about an extra £500 a month from what I was looking at for a storage unit anyway. So we took it, fitted it out, and made a fucking wicked creative working space in Seven Sisters – Crucible reborn.
I’ve been in Seven Sisters for 3.5 years now and it is an absolute riot. In the space of time I have been here, the already pretty fun, creative scene has grown exponentially and there are always mad things going on all around. Just in my building – we have gardeners, artists, music producers, film makers… And the list goes on.
For a while now I had been wanting to do some interesting collaborations with the neighbours; and had just been waiting on the right opportunity so when Flo, UK Jӓgermeister Brand Ambassador, got in touch about the Meister Hunter final I was well excited.
I had got to speak with Stevan and Heera, who run Cambio Studios (@cambiostudios) next door, at a local creatives get together thing. They were really interesting in that they were multidisciplinary, clearly talented and also very clearly a bit mad (in a good way). They make all manner of things with all kinds of materials from leather to ceramics, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get them involved in a project.
When we started talking about it, they got super excited and were adamant that I had to meet Josefina Isaza (josefinaisaza.com/) – another artist in their building that they had done a bunch of work with. As it turns out, Josefina is a world class ceramics artist – they showed me some of her work and it’s properly extraterrestrial!
Wanting to incorporate her work into the competition, we had the idea that each of the bartenders would collaborate with Josefina to create a ‘serving vessel’ for their drink. The challenge from our point of view was that Josefina needed time to sculpt each of the cups, they had to dry, then they had to be painted, fired again and then they would be ready… So each of the bartenders ended up coming up with their own vessel moodboard and then having multiple online consultations regarding their project, long in advance of the actual event.
So that was the first part of the final challenges sorted. Having spoken with Flo, and looked at the kind of activations that the Jäger team had been doing over the last year, it was obvious that we had to include some nature – ‘out in the wild’ sort of aspect. With the final being in November, and us being in North London, any kind of foraging activity was out. We were kind of stumped for a minute.
But then I remembered that I’d recently seen some work by an old friend of mine from Glasgow days – Brian D’Sauza. We first met when he was DJing in one of my mates bars in Glasgow. He’s a very intriguing character who wears many hats – kind of Superman/ Clark Kent vibes. By day, he started a wildly successful agency that supplies music to all kinds of consumer facing outlets, from places like the Selfridges to Wahaca. And by night he has this, also very successful, DJ persona Auntie Flo – he headlines festivals and plays in the best clubs all over the world. As I said, very interesting guy.
Anyway during the pandemic, he had kind of gone off piste and had been going deep into the noises made by nature. Foraging for sound, if you will. This kind of goes on the premise that every living thing puts out electrical signals and those signals can be turned into MIDI signals which in turn can be assigned to instruments… sickkkkk. He also has a studio round the corner from me now so we caught up and hatched a plan. We kind of bashed a few ideas around – maybe taking the bartenders down the park and recording some trees, but again we had the challenge of having to have bits ready for the bartenders in advance. We had already decided that each bartender would get some studio time with Brian to make a soundtrack for their performance..
Eventually, we came up with the idea of recording a load of the botanicals that were in Jӓgermeister, as well as some other ingredients that we would have on hand for the bartenders to use in their drinks. That way, when the bartenders had made their drinks and were making a soundtrack using the sounds from the ingredients in their drinks, we thought it would be really cool to see if there were natural synergies between the flavours, sounds and feel of the drinks… Quite far out, but I think it turned out cool as fuck.
We were all over the moon with how it all came together in the end… I think the bartenders were all in that good place of being outside of their comfort zone, but not so far that they were overwhelmed. It’s a real fun exercise in showing how bartenders using flavour as their creative outlet is just as valid an art form as music, ceramics or whatever. It was great to see the chaos of the cultures clash unfold in real time and see the outputs in each aspect of the competition all tied together. As a first foray tapping into the creative powers of our new neighbourhood, I think it was a resounding success and I am very much looking forward to seeing what other collabs we can come up with.
Ah, and here’s some nice words from Flo about the project!
“We asked Stu and Crucible to deliver a 2 days challenge which includes 2-3 challenges for our finalists which they then had to present at the finale at the Amano hotel in Covent Garden.
It was the second time that we worked together with the team from the Crucible, and as usual they smashed it.
Working with Crucible is an absolute pleasure, as Stu and the team are super professional and always deliver to the highest level. The team knows what Jägermeister is all about and delivers to our values, as it is really important to us to showcase with the Meister Hunter competition the versatility and the complexity of our herbal liquors.
The 2023 Meister Hunter challenge was all about the senses and bringing people together. The finalists left the competition with beautiful memories and new friendships – Crucible team really helped us to create those moments. Also, this MH had a record of 170 plus entries which is something we are super proud of.
The Crucible is the perfect partner for our competition as they provide you with so many options and creativity to deliver new angles for cocktail competitions on a world class level. I can’t wait to work together with the Crucible team in 2024!”
Florian Beuren, UK Brand Ambassador, Jägermeister
Jagermeister Competition
BY STU BALE
In the summer of 2020, we actually had a bit of a stroke of luck. Like so many other small businesses in the pandemic, we had a dickhead landlord who wanted full payment every month, even though nobody could come in and all of our revenue streams had dried up. The stroke of luck was that our lease was up in July, so we were able to leave. If we’d had to stay there much longer, Crucible would have been done as we were hemorrhaging cash at a wonderful rate.
I started looking for storage units to put all of the bits in until the storm passed and we could re-start somewhere fresh. As it actually turned out, storage units in London, of the size I needed weren’t as cheap as I had hoped…
However, one of the buildings I went to see a storage unit in, had this big blank space room – by chance I saw it was empty. It had no electricity and no running water – it was a shell. But I loved it, and it was only about an extra £500 a month from what I was looking at for a storage unit anyway. So we took it, fitted it out, and made a fucking wicked creative working space in Seven Sisters – Crucible reborn.
I’ve been in Seven Sisters for 3.5 years now and it is an absolute riot. In the space of time I have been here, the already pretty fun, creative scene has grown exponentially and there are always mad things going on all around. Just in my building – we have gardeners, artists, music producers, film makers… And the list goes on.
For a while now I had been wanting to do some interesting collaborations with the neighbours; and had just been waiting on the right opportunity so when Flo, UK Jӓgermeister Brand Ambassador, got in touch about the Meister Hunter final I was well excited.
I had got to speak with Stevan and Heera, who run Cambio Studios (@cambiostudios) next door, at a local creatives get together thing. They were really interesting in that they were multidisciplinary, clearly talented and also very clearly a bit mad (in a good way). They make all manner of things with all kinds of materials from leather to ceramics, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get them involved in a project.
Wanting to incorporate her work into the competition, we had the idea that each of the bartenders would collaborate with Josefina to create a ‘serving vessel’ for their drink. The challenge from our point of view was that Josefina needed time to sculpt each of the cups, they had to dry, then they had to be painted, fired again and then they would be ready… So each of the bartenders ended up coming up with their own vessel moodboard and then having multiple online consultations regarding their project, long in advance of the actual event.
Ceramics by Josefina Isaza
So that was the first part of the final challenges sorted. Having spoken with Flo, and looked at the kind of activations that the Jäger team had been doing over the last year, it was obvious that we had to include some nature – ‘out in the wild’ sort of aspect. With the final being in November, and us being in North London, any kind of foraging activity was out. We were kind of stumped for a minute.
But then I remembered that I’d recently seen some work by an old friend of mine from Glasgow days – Brian D’Sauza. We first met when he was DJing in one of my mates bars in Glasgow. He’s a very intriguing character who wears many hats – kind of Superman/ Clark Kent vibes. By day, he started a wildly successful agency that supplies music to all kinds of consumer facing outlets, from places like the Selfridges to Wahaca. And by night he has this, also very successful, DJ persona Auntie Flo – he headlines festivals and plays in the best clubs all over the world. As I said, very interesting guy.
Anyway during the pandemic, he had kind of gone off piste and had been going deep into the noises made by nature. Foraging for sound, if you will. This kind of goes on the premise that every living thing puts out electrical signals and those signals can be turned into MIDI signals which in turn can be assigned to instruments… sickkkkk. He also has a studio round the corner from me now so we caught up and hatched a plan. We kind of bashed a few ideas around – maybe taking the bartenders down the park and recording some trees, but again we had the challenge of having to have bits ready for the bartenders in advance. We had already decided that each bartender would get some studio time with Brian to make a soundtrack for their performance…
Eventually, we came up with the idea of recording a load of the botanicals that were in Jӓgermeister, as well as some other ingredients that we would have on hand for the bartenders to use in their drinks. That way, when the bartenders had made their drinks and were making a soundtrack using the sounds from the ingredients in their drinks, we thought it would be really cool to see if there were natural synergies between the flavours, sounds and feel of the drinks… Quite far out, but I think it turned out cool as fuck.
We were all over the moon with how it all came together in the end… I think the bartenders were all in that good place of being outside of their comfort zone, but not so far that they were overwhelmed. It’s a real fun exercise in showing how bartenders using flavour as their creative outlet is just as valid an art form as music, ceramics or whatever. It was great to see the chaos of the cultures clash unfold in real time and see the outputs in each aspect of the competition all tied together. As a first foray tapping into the creative powers of our new neighbourhood, I think it was a resounding success and I am very much looking forward to seeing what other collabs we can come up with.
Mushroom sounds by Brian D’Sauza / Auntie Flo
Ah, and here’s some nice words from Flo about the project!
“We asked Stu and Crucible to deliver a 2 days challenge which includes 2-3 challenges for our finalists which they then had to present at the finale at the Amano hotel in Covent Garden.
It was the second time that we worked together with the team from the Crucible, and as usual they smashed it.
Working with Crucible is an absolute pleasure, as Stu and the team are super professional and always deliver to the highest level. The team knows what Jägermeister is all about and delivers to our values, as it is really important to us to showcase with the Meister Hunter competition the versatility and the complexity of our herbal liquors.
The 2023 Meister Hunter challenge was all about the senses and bringing people together. The finalists left the competition with beautiful memories and new friendships – Crucible team really helped us to create those moments. Also, this MH had a record of 170 plus entries which is something we are super proud of.
The Crucible is the perfect partner for our competition as they provide you with so many options and creativity to deliver new angles for cocktail competitions on a world class level. I can’t wait to work together with the Crucible team in 2024!”
Florian Beuren, UK Brand Ambassador, Jägermeister