A modern version of an old-fashioned soda fountain
Vena's Chocolate Phosphate includes bitters.
Channon Hodge/CNN
Some of the drinks harkened back to another era.
The first drinks the Cormans developed were reminiscent of old-fashioned soda fountains: the lime rickeys, now in four flavors, and chocolate and cherry phosphates.
They also wanted created their own unique concoctions, like the Love Potion Number 9, made from raspberry gomme (an old-fashioned syrup), rose simple syrup, squeezed lime juice, Bolivar bitters, ghost pepper extract and seltzer.
Ginger Julep was made from muddled fresh mint, ginger puree, ginger syrup, ginger bitters, smoky habanero bitters, ghost pepper and seltzer.
Steve became Vena's head bartender, learning about mixology via YouTube videos, nailing those 10 drinks in his first few months on the job.
Part art and part science, the couple created and discovered ingredients to play with and invented new drinks. If they did well, they got added to the menu.
"One of the first we came up (around Valentine's Day 2014) with was the Lumberjack Love," she said.
They found a pine syrup made from this little company out in Colorado "that we just died over," which they turned into a best-selling piney lemonade.
These days, Steve leads the bartending staff. He works with more than 200 bitters and 30 shrubs to invent new drinks, trains Vena's staff, and leads classes to train bartenders and home enthusiasts of what they call liquid alchemy with bitters.
Johanna focuses on inventing and producing syrups and other products in her tiny commercial kitchen and developing Vena's retail operations. Next to the bar, Vena's sells ingredients for people to make their own drinks at home, including Johanna's own bitters and dry mixes that don't break US airport security liquid rules.