Sound a bit byzantine? It gets better. At Mr. Brown’s Columbia Room in Washington, a new drink called Ghost Dance gets going when aromatic sweetgrass (also called bison grass) and a star anise pod are set smoldering under an upturned glass. After the vessel has been thoroughly “rinsed” with the vapors, this Sazerac variation is completed with Calvados, Fernet-Branca and simple syrup.

But even that process takes a back seat to the Smoker’s Delight, served at Todd Thrasher’s bar PX in Alexandria, Va. Mr. Thrasher takes three or four different kinds of tobacco, steeps them in hot water for five minutes, strains it, adds sugar and reduces the mixture. He mixes a few drops of this with bourbon, honey syrup and lemon juice. Mr. Thrasher created the cocktail for his business partner, who had just quit smoking.

“I think it adds another nuance of flavor,” Mr. Thrasher said. “Smoke has always been in food. In cocktails, unless you used mezcals and Scotches, you don’t get it. It’s me trying to move beyond really sweet and really dry cocktails.”

There are as many ways to deliver embers to alcohol as there are woods to burn. The most common tool (and the simplest method) is the smoke gun. Stuff wood chips in the device’s chamber, light them, and the smoke snakes through a tube to its desired target.

This is how Amber Johannson, at Mistral Kitchen in Seattle, treats the bourbon for the Courting Rachel, her take on an Old-Fashioned. After filling a decanter with smoke, she chases it with the mixed drink, then pours the result over rocks.