To celebrate the release of Belvedere Dirty Brew, we’re featuring a series of stories showcasing one drink, one bartender, and one great bar. Belvedere Dirty Brew is an expertly-crafted fusion of the smoothness of Belvedere Organic Vodka with the rich taste of coffee flavour — to learn more, contact your Moët Hennessy representative.
When Brendan Scott Grey came aboard to open Tigerfish in November last year, the bar and restaurant — which is sat right across from Cottesloe Beach in Perth — opened into a mad rush of trade, just as summer was about to hit.
“We hit the ground running so hard,” he says. “There was a lot of learning on the fly whilst we were at capacity from day one, six days a week.”
Brendan has been a brand ambassador, bartender, bar manager, sales guy — he’s also quite the cocktail scholar. He’s also got the right energy for running a high volume bar that caters to walk-in bar patrons and restaurant-goers alike.
Below, Brendan talks to us about what is required to run a busy bar like Tigerfish, and steps us through his enlivening Belvedere Dirty Brew cocktail, the Breakfast Brew.
BOOTHBY: What’s your role here Brendan?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: I'm the bar manager at Tigerfish, in Cottesloe, just on the beach in Western Australia.
BOOTHBY: What's the idea behind this place? How would you describe the food and drinks?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: The food is very rich, very traditional, and the drinks are designed to be very fresh, very citrusy and kind of balance out those two things.
BOOTHBY: And you opened coming into last summer?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: Opening a beachside bar in November in Perth, it was a wild move in Cottesloe. We hit the ground running so hard. There was a lot of learning on the fly whilst we were at capacity from day one, six days a week. It was bananas. It was a wonderful experience and we're still here, so we survived it.
BOOTHBY: Ready for summer number two.
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: Much more prepared for summer number two this time.
BOOTHBY: How do you go about putting the drinks together here? Because obviously it can get quite busy, and you mentioned that you pretty much bash everything.
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: Absolutely. The speed of service required here, to keep up with both the restaurant and the front bar, has been a very defining characteristic. So everything has had to be batched as far as we possibly can. Its main upsides are consistency of flavour, it's allowed me to have a lot of control over what I'm doing, and also allows my bartenders a lot of extra time to chit chat and connect with the customer.
BOOTHBY: Get the people what they want, which is a tasty drink in their hands, right?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: Absolutely. Speed is the key. Sometimes they want the chit chat, sometimes it's like a Margarita in 30 seconds. And I get that — sometimes that's what I want as well.
BOOTHBY: What’s the idea behind this drink you’ve made with Belvedere Dirty Brew?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: This is my drink, the Breakfast Brew. The idea of this came from when tasting the Belvedere Dirty Brew, with the kind of viscousness of it, and the spicy rye flavours, I end up settling on pomegranate juice as what I wanted to pair that together. I worked with a Breakfast Martini-style idea in my head. So in this is the Belvedere Dirty Brew, pomegranate juice, grenadine, a small amount of Amaro Montenegro. And then on the rim I've used a burnt pomegranate paint with strawberry powder on the side of it.
BOOTHBY: How would you describe the tastes?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: This is very much a little clash of worlds — the bitterness of the coffee playing against that astringent, citrusy flavour of the pomegranate.
BOOTHBY: Coffee and that rich fruit character can be really appealing as a combo.
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: I think so. The classic coffee drinks often lean more towards a dessert style, or just more coffee, right? But coffee actually does have a lot of potential to move towards the more citrus kind of flavours.
BOOTHBY: What were the notes you wanted to pull out of Belvedere Dirty Brew?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: It's definitely not a standard coffee liqueur. The Belvedere, the rye-based vodka 100 percent comes through, so there's a bit more spice to it. It's definitely drier than other coffee liqueurs. You're definitely getting a bit more viscosity with the coffee and the rye in there together. A lovely challenge.
BOOTHBY: Talk to us a bit about your career. How'd you get started bartending? What's the origin story there?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: My origin story for bartending is a fairly classic Australian one. I needed a side hustle during university and got into bartending, it worked well with the hours. And then I just slowly developed a real love for it and a real passion. There was a lot of opportunity in the industry, and then slowly but surely it just became the dominant thing I wanted to do in my life. And here I am now.
BOOTHBY: You’ve been an ambassador, run bars, bartended. What is it about the gig that draws you to it?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: It's a wild career, right? There's so many directions you can go — advocacy, or management, marketing, people. I’ve done a lot of bartending, did a lot of brand ambassador work, sales rep work, and now back to managing. I suppose the big appeal for me is one, I just love spirits and cocktails. There's just so much history and lore and story there which I just find fascinating. And secondly, I do actually just quite enjoy people. I quite like being at a bar and just meeting some new people and having a chit-chat — I'm very much in my happy space. And look, just cleaning down a bar actually ticks my happy space at the end of the night.
BOOTHBY: There's a sense of accomplishment there.
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: Sometimes it's just those little things, like that's a clean bar — endorphin kick. I'm good. Off to sleep.
BOOTHBY: You visit Japan a fair bit. How did that start for you?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: It started with [Japanese cocktail book] Kokuteeru, I suppose. I just started going down deep rabbit holes of trying to find out more about Japanese cocktail culture, and history, and discovered that there was a first Japanese cocktail book that hadn't been translated into English. I got that translated, started working with Japanese bartenders over there, and started the scholarship program to send other bartenders over — and then decided I wanted to go over and do it myself just to see what it was like. Now I’ll be back in Tokyo again, at Bar High Five in February coming up. This will be my fifth tour. I just keep on going back because Ueno San and Kari San are just so much better than me. So it is a wonderful place to learn, to up my skills, to get inspired, and also just keep me very humble. It brings me back down to earth very, very effectively.
BOOTHBY: What is the big difference between working at a place like Bar High Five, and comparable bars in Australia?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: Good question. They are not the same. Bar High Five is designed around the customer, a very peaceful, efficient experience. So the whole idea is they sit down, they're welcome, they've got snacks, they've got water, they've got their drinks as fast as possible, they get their drinks tailored to them. There's that extra time and care and love put into every individual person in a 24 seater, with 11 of us sprinting as fast as we can to get it done. Compared to Australia, I think the business models are very different. The amount of drinks we need to get out to make that work as a business is a very, very different scenario. We still achieve a different style of hospitality in Australia. The thing I find most inspiring about Australian bartenders is our ability to make a drink whilst talking to two or three people at the same time.
Certainly in Japan, there's no chit-chat with the customer whilst they're making the drinks, the focus is 100 percent on the drinks. The people making the drinks, their dedication is absolutely to that.
BOOTHBY: It’s almost just like dispense service then?
BRENDAN SCOTT GREY: More or less, yeah, as we would call it. Only that on dispense, a master bartender with 40 years experience executing drinks with absolute precision.
Breakfast Brew
- 45ml Belvedere Dirty Brew
- 45ml pomegranate juice
- 10ml grenadine
- 5ml Amaro Montenegro
- 10ml cold drip coffee
Garnish with burnt pomegranate molasses paint and freeze-dried strawberry powder.
Born in the after-hours, Belvedere Dirty Brew is where rich, bold flavours harmonize — smooth, dark, and unapologetically untamed. Dirty Brew is an expertly-crafted fusion of the smoothness of Belvedere Organic Vodka with the rich taste of coffee flavour. With dark toffee notes and russet undertones, the Dirty Brew liquid shines with a decadent and viscous texture. Dirty Brew is for those bold moments when one drink turns into sunrise — where spontaneity and curiosity meet indulgence and self-expression.
