The Gayviary is a queer quest to make every cocktail from The Aviary Cocktail Book. It began in 2019 as a fun creative challenge and quickly grew into something much larger than I ever expected.

It has included collaborations with dozens of friends, travels around the country in search of rare liquor, learning a plethora of new culinary and mixology techniques, and too many epic side quests to count.

To put it another way, even a completionist like me could make my way through most cocktail books without seeking the services of a glass blower, brewing beer, foraging for edible weeds, or learning 3D design software to create a custom silicone ice mold. This project, however, has also required me to repair a ship in a bottle, purchase 80-year-old liquor from French eBay, and confront the sad reality that I suck at growing microgreens—or anything else—from seed.

This blog is a story told from the middle. As of today, I have completed 61 of the 118 entries in The Aviary Cocktail Book as faithfully as possible. Some are bespoke renditions of classic cocktails, while others require rare ingredients, complex techniques, and the specific service pieces used by The Aviary. Substitutions are rare and only made when an ingredient is genuinely unavailable. Creative license, when taken at all, is limited to presentation rather than the recipe itself.

So why now?

I’ve wanted to launch this blog for over two years. When this journey began, all of the progress was documented on our Instagram account, where my friend and I would write a sort of micro-blog in the caption of each post along with our photos. It was a fun way to share our creative process beyond the invite list for our cocktail parties. Instagram was a lot different in 2019 than it is today, and it fostered more of a community feel for home bartenders sharing their favorite cocktails.

Much has changed over the years. The sense of community on Instagram has been disrupted many times over by the rise of influencers, sponsored content, and now AI. Video has replaced still images as the medium of choice. And Instagram aside, the stories from this project need room to breathe. Having a dedicated website separate from any social media platform bypasses the issues of character count, image sharing limits, and linking to related content. While I’ll still be sharing on The Gayviary’s Instagram account, the posts will focus more on photos and videos and will serve as a short-form version of my progress–much more suited to how people actually use social media today. It will also be a way to remain in touch with that community of friends, home bartenders, professional bartenders, and others like me whose passion for their hobby has, at times, prompted more than a few sanity checks.

Rather than beginning at the start and writing through the 61 cocktails I’ve already completed—or waiting until the book is finished to reflect on The Gayviary as a whole—I’ve decided to tell the story from both directions, alternating between past and present. Archive posts will revisit cocktails I’ve made through a mix of excerpts from the original Instagram posts and new reflections on what was happening behind the scenes at the time, while new cocktails will be documented in real time as I continue working through the remaining recipes.

To kick things off, I will leave you with two articles: 2 in 1–the first cocktail I ever made from the book, and Bring Another Smurf!–my first cocktail since building this website.

Cheers, Clint

Thanks for reading.

Whether you're a fellow home bartender, photographer, writer, collector, or simply enjoyed the story, I'd love to hear from you at hello@gayviary.com.