Sidle up to the Bitter Bar inside Boulder’s cozy and lively Happy Noodle House on a packed night, and you’re likely to see Mark Stoddard in action. As numerous imbibers order from the impressive cocktail menus, Stoddard and his crew work swiftly, yet carefully, to prepare the creative concoctions. Those skills were recently on display at the super trendy Ace Hotel in New York City during the 42BELOW Cocktail World Cup U.S. Final, where Stoddard and a team of seven went through 108 bottles of vodka and countless lemons, oranges, limes, and other stocked ingredients to churn out 1,541 cocktails in one hour, blowing away the prior Guinness World Record of 937 (Westword).

Stoddard nabbed a second record for making 233 of the cocktails himself. “I had my own personal caller who would call out each drink, each with a different 42BELOW flavor,” he explains. “So I was thinking five or six drinks ahead. We had all these varied ingredients at our hands, and I had to be very focused.”