Here he had the opportunity to work with and learn from world-renowned chef Cal Stamenov, and sommelier Mark Jensen, formerly of the Highlands Inn. It wasnâ€™t long, though, before he was recruited to open the Bernardus Lodge in Carmel Valley. He worked as a bartender through college at the award-winning Montrio in Monterey, CA. John went from dish washer, to busser, to waiter before finding his stride at the bar.

Bitten by the hospitality bug in high school and continuing through college, he used his skills to move ahead when others may have thrown in the towel â€“ literally. John Pomeroy is the epitome of balance â€“ in life and in his cocktails. Just don’t go confusing the two: no one wants to drink a 15% ABV beer, 15 proof is plenty. Since proof and alcohol by volume measure the same thing, paying attention to just one of them is all the information you really need. “Distillers arbitrarily control the strength of their spirits by dilution before downstream modifications such as maturation.” “Beer has traditionally been brewed to a specific strength, but modern brewers often ferment at higher strengths then high gravity brewing,” explains Hughes. Within those parameters though, whether a beer is 10 proof or 15 proof, or whether a spirit is 80 proof or 100 proof, can be controlled in principle. Unlike spirits, beer is not distilled after fermentation to separate out the water from the alcohol and produce higher concentrations of ABV. During fermentation, the yeast that breaks down the sugars in the brew’s grain typically becomes inactive when the ABV rises above 10%.

Neither proof nor alcohol by volume are standardized, but “it’s the nature of the beast,” says Hughes, that beer contains less alcohol than spirits.

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