December 2010
16 posts
All Around the World
Thanksgiving and Christmas are for the family — and what a special time, really. New Year’s Eve, though, that’s for us drinkers. Around the world we humans usher in the new year with fireworks, noise-makers and alcohol.
Preachers, teachers and teetotalers allow themselves to indulge in a flute of champagne, a sip of spiked punch or “just one” drink and revel with...
“The problems with mixology begin with the word itself, a clumsy cocktail of...”
– Sarah Deming on exactly what’s wrong with the world of drinking. Go read it, take it in and remember that the bar should be the public house, the nexus of our neighborhoods and an oasis from the pervasive bullshit that soils our day.
Threepenny: Deming, Against Mixology
(h/t Buzz Anderson)
“The owners of the Vancouver’s Loose Moose bar performed an audit earlier...”
– CBC News - British Columbia - Shot-glass discrepancy hurts Canadian bars
Or “why we didn’t convert to the metric system.”
1 tag
5 tags
Home Bar Basics - Tools
We’re a little ashamed that we haven’t covered some of the basics about building your home bar here on American Drink. So when Cary, aka Monkeyfrog, asked us via email how to decently stock her home bar, we figured our long-ass response would make a pretty decent Part One.
Before we get to the shopping list though, here’s an appeal from the heart: Please don’t spend a lot for bar tools. If your...
1 tag
Whoa
The Bygone Bureau | The Best New Blogs of 2010
“I get flustered at bars that don’t serve beer because I never know what to order. Each cocktail has its own reputation and history. They’re mythical creatures, like centaurs, only I probably know more about centaurs than I do about Mint Juleps.
Which is why I’m thankful for American Drink […]”
— Kevin Nguyen
We’re a...
“FRANK SINATRA, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the...”
– So begins a profile of one of Hollywood’s best known drinkers by one of America’s best known profile writers, Gay Talese. When it ran in Esquire magazine in 1966, it helped launch a new form of nonfiction writing that did to plain old journalism what fermentation did to plain old...
1 tag
Every Day Is Repeal Day
Seventy-seven years ago today this past Sunday, one of the largest P.R. gaffes in the short history of a nation with a lot of P.R. gaffes was corrected. The National Prohibition Act, passed in 1919 and enacted in 1920, was repealed after what must’ve been the 13 most surreal years to be alive and in America.
For so many reasons, this day fascinates me.
First, there’s the obvious,...
“Prohibition? HA! They tried that in the movies and it didn’t work.”
– Homer Simpson
4 tags
