What makes a cocktail, a cocktail? I’ve been trying to determine this for myself, but in my vastly underinformed opinion, it’s usually some type of liquor combined with at least one other ingredient, and — from the complex tiki drinks to the well vodka sodas that dominated my early 20s — the range is unfathomable.

This is the question that brought me to Noc Noc, a beer and sake dive bar in the Lower Haight that I’d heard about from other bartenders and bar owners but had never actually visited. Sure, I write about cocktails , but what about the San Francisco bars that focus on just one or two things, and how do they fit in?

In Noc Noc’s case, I was there to learn how to properly make and drink a sake bomb.

I’d drank sake before, but never with a beer. I had been peer-pressured in co

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