Kindred’s Sundance No. 2: where winter crushes summer

Make it to spec, but still double-check

Author

By Amanda Tascher

Publish Date

Aug. 10, 2023

Kindred’s Sundance No. 2

Krisan Fromm

"Sundance…number two?” I ask with piqued curiosity. Raising her voice above heavy metal music riffing throughout Kindred, bar lead Krisan Fromm replies, “We updated our ‘winter Sundance’ with a newer version that has a blueberry honey.”

She begins by pulling a bottle of Longball Iced Tea, then Evan Williams bourbon, followed by Bols apricot brandy. To complete the concoction, Fromm uses “lavender bitters, and then we make our own house blueberry vegan honey” — naturally, this being a vegan establishment. “And then add lemon, and that’s our new updated version! Our old one had a little bit of the same, but instead of the blueberry honey, we used orgeat, so it was a little bit more nutty.”

It’s their twist on a classic whiskey sour. “Kind of tart, the tea’s not overpowering… We don’t have another blueberry cocktail on the menu at the moment, and in the past, it’s been really popular. When people are looking at it, I’ll tell them it’s super approachable, very refreshing. Nice summer crusher.”

Fromm lets me sample an isolated taste of the Longball, made by ReBru Spirits in Barrio Logan. “It’s like a more refreshing kind of whiskey-lemonade, newer on the market for San Diego. There’s not really another hard tea that’s crushable, that is worth putting in a cocktail.” It’s harder than I expected, and Fromm grants, “It’s still like whiskey, but with iced tea flavors. So the tea vibes went well, dried it out a little, and made the cocktail less sweet.”

Place

Kindred

1504 30th Street, San Diego

Bachelor button flowers garnish the drink, turned pretty pink by blueberry honey — or as they call it here, “blunny.” She elaborates on the punny name, “We use a rice nectar, which is a vegan version of honey. So we reduce the blueberries into the rice nectar and strain it out and have our own little version.”

For those making it at home, she offers sage advice: “Make sure that it’s not just honey to make a honey syrup. So usually like one-to-one, hot water and honey so it’s a little less viscous — otherwise, your blender’s not gonna have a good time. And then do another double strain afterward to get most of the blueberry meat out of there. There’s still gonna be some in there, but a double strainer will get most of it out.”

Finally, she counsels, “Taste your syrup, too. Because each blueberry batch is going to have a different sweetness. So even if you make it to spec, you’re still gonna have to double-check.”

Kindred