"You Choose" — 18/81

Venue: 18/81, Thorp Street, B5 4AT; Website
Choice: Five Card Charlie (£9); Chooser: The Owners

We can't say where 18/81 is because it's secret squirrels. What we can tell you is that 23 years ago the venue was a nightclub we frequented aged 15 because the door men were, shall we say, flexible about the over 18s policy. These days the drinks offering has improved by six trillion percent, going from Red Stripe (canned) or Red Stripe (bottled), to hands-down the best pre-batched cocktails in the city. The thinking behind 18/81, and we're struggling to fault the logic, is that we spend mind-numbing amounts of time waiting for freshly made but bang-average cocktails in carbon-copy chain bars, when a short stroll from New Street Station you can get significantly better, indy-owned, almost entirely readymade drinks (save for a last minute zhoosh), inside a minute. The Five Card Charlie, pictured (aged rum, fig, walnut and dark choc) was appallingly good. Bite the block and coat your mouth with cocoa before allowing the rich, warming liquor to wash the treat down. Immediately one of the best cocktails in Brum, readymade or not. For precision, 18/81 measures its combos on scales not in jiggers, and the results are almost universally kickass. Bankers Punch was another hit, while Viva Cereza, quite brilliantly showed the difference in a drink when taken through a straw or sipped. Goodbye forever, The Alchemist.