American Drink

newyorker: The Photo Booth gives us a Prohibition slide-show,...

seoulbrother — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:51:09 -0600

The Photo Booth gives us a Prohibition slide-show, complete with protesters, secret flasks, and flappers

youllbehealed: Ladies do not drink, nor do they smoke in...

seoulbrother — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:17:02 -0600

Ladies do not drink, nor do they smoke in circles that I have ever moved in, in St. Louis. It may prevail in homes that I do not know of, but I am sure that the rule is quite different. I certainly would not like to revisit a home where cocktails or liquors of any kind were served to ladies, or where the hostess would permit such customs.

I should no more think of going to an entertainment where such things were permitted than I would go to the house where they permitted bridge whist to be played for money.

—Mrs. Ashley D. Scott of 3515 Morgan St., St. Louis. She’s quoted in “The Cocktail Habit Among Ladies: Are the Titillating Stimulators Before Dinner and the Varicolored Liqueur After, Desirable Aids to Feminine Sociability?”, The St. Louis Republic, 1903. Spread pictured above.

Scientists discover booze helps with problem-solving

seoulbrother — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:00:00 -0600

Scientists discover booze helps with problem-solving:

Getting a buzz from booze may boost creativity. Men who drank themselves tipsy solved more problems demanding verbal resourcefulness in less time than sober guys did, a new study finds.

h/t Miles Van Pelt

therewillbebourbon: Happy Opening Day!

seoulbrother — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:43:26 -0600

therewillbebourbon:

Happy Opening Day!

"If one needs an example of how to drink a proper daiquiri, one need only go back to the 1960s. On..."

seoulbrother — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:45:01 -0600

“If one needs an example of how to drink a proper daiquiri, one need only go back to the 1960s. On the night he was elected president in 1960, John F. Kennedy sat sipping daiquiris in the dining room of his house in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. When dinner was over, Kennedy rose and walked to a a nearby room to watch a small television with bad reception. Here, he checked in on the election returns, and here—infused with the glow of a daiquiri—he learned he would be the next inhabitant of the White House.”

- And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World In Ten Cocktails by Wayne Curtis (Amazon)

insooutso: Word.

seoulbrother — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:22:35 -0600

insooutso:

Word.

The Daiquiri

seoulbrother — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:00:05 -0600

The Daiquri shares a name with a beach near Santiago, Cuba and a nearby iron mine. One story says a bunch of American mining engineers came up with the drink after dusting off their gin and substituting rum. Another says the drink started life as the legendary Grog back in the 1700s. What we do know about the daiquri’s origin story is that in 1909, a U.S. Navy Admiral with a pimp’s name— Lucius Johnson— introduced the drink to the Army Navy Club in Washington, D.C. Ernest Hemingway and John F. Kennedy enjoyed everything about a daiquiri or two (or 12) and In 1948 David Embury tapped it as one of the six basic drinks¹ in his seminal book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.

What about any of that begs to be slurped from a whale bone while getting your vacation-braids did or screams “SHOW ME YOUR TITS!”

The daiquiri is a good, hard drink. Simple, dry, refreshing, a classic sour with more in common to a Tom Collins than a Slurpee.

So what happened? Well, it’s difficult to tell exactly so let’s take a look at the obvious: America happened. On the one hand, we often accidentally define cool. On the other hand, we commodify, artificially color and sweeten it and call it progress— worse yet, innovation. Apparently this resonated with a post-WWII population eager to unleash the atom, cure polio and win space. Advertisers jumped on it by printing recipes calling for limeade frozen concentrate. That’s about as timeless as a Foreigner slow-jam. [queue butt-rock ballad]

Big Papa

A man walks into a bar and orders a daiquiri. The man drinks it down, looks at the bartender and says, “That’s good, but I prefer it without sugar and double rum.” The bartender turns around and whips one up. The man says “This is very good!” The end.

That man? Ernest Hemingway. You may have heard about his drinking or maybe his writing. His version of the daiquiri became the Papa Doble.

The Hemingway Daiquiri is different. It’s made with a teaspoon of maraschino liquor and a quick splash of fresh grapefruit juice, Buh-lended. Just like them chicken-heads in Cabo San LOCO do.

That’s right: He preferred his daiquiris blended and by the dozen. Like the big ol’ former war-reporting, big-game hunting, sissy-pants that he is.

Chances are that your first daiquiri was made from frozen juice concentrate. It was mine. I’m sure I was under the legal drinking age and my palate was still that of a child. It was too sweet. I got too sick. Because Americans don’t read and I am an American, I never learned about Hemingway’s fascination with them.

To crib from Adam Lisagor:

“Sometimes I don’t know things for a really long time, and then suddenly I know them and I feel much better.”

The Daiquiri² is one of those things.

The Daiquiri

2 oz white rum
1 oz lime juice
1/2 - 1 oz simple syrup to taste

Shake³, strain and serve that bad boy up. Try a woody gold rum like Rhum Barbancourt Five Star or Cruzan Aged Light Rum instead of the Bacardi your aunt used to drink.

The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks lists the Manhattan, Martini, the Old Fashioned, Sidecar and the Jack Rose alongside the Daiquiri as the six basic drinks. ↩
And Adam Lisgor’s little gem about one of Miles Davis’ massive influences. Check it out. ↩
A note on shaking and straining: Use lots of ice in your shaker and shake for at least a standing-8 count, about 10-15 seconds. Once done, strain your drink out and never use that shaken ice again. Throw it out like you’re made out of new money. ↩

American Drinks Compounded. This is an illustration from Mark...

seoulbrother — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:00:05 -0600

American Drinks Compounded. This is an illustration from Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, 1869.

Via youllbehealed - a nice collection of boozy quotes, art and assorted trinkets.

newyorker: “I Wonder If Mr. Fieldcrest Is Married?”: New Yorker...

seoulbrother — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:39:54 -0600

newyorker:

“I Wonder If Mr. Fieldcrest Is Married?”: New Yorker Ads from the “Mad Men” Era

When “Mad Men” finally—finally—returns from its long hiatus on Sunday, many mysteries stand to be resolved: Has Don married Canadian Megan? Did Joan have Roger’s baby? Will Peggy drop acid at the Summer of Love?

No matter the oscillations of the character’s lives (and hairstyles), one thing is certain: there will be ads. In honor of the upcoming season, we’ve looked through the magazine’s archives from the early sixties and culled a smattering of vintage New Yorker ads that recall the boozy, beehive-y “Mad Men” universe.

For a slide show of more Mad Men-era ads featured in The New Yorker, visit: http://nyr.kr/GSaJ60

…71-year-old Whitehead said he lifted a sample bottle of...

seoulbrother — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:39:00 -0600

…71-year-old Whitehead said he lifted a sample bottle of tequila over his head.

“I told them to come on with it[…]”

Story via

lindstifa

"First, the mindfulness-seeking bartenders in the workshop are asked to make a Negroni. The..."

sloganeerist — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:00:39 -0700

“First, the mindfulness-seeking bartenders in the workshop are asked to make a Negroni. The ingredients (gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari) have been measured out in advance. Moments later, the same bartenders are instructed to make a Negroni again, with the exact same ingredients, only this time with a twist: They must close their eyes for a minute and simply think about someone they love. That second Negroni is supposed to be conjured up with that object of affection in mind. “And that one always tastes better than the first,” Mr. Regan said. “You’d be amazed at how well this works. It makes a tangible difference. It just does.””

- I’ll Have the Enlightenment, Please, and Make That a Double - NYTimes.com

I don’t know if I buy into this whole mindful eating thing. But bartenders who actually give a damn what your drink tastes like? That’s a concept I’m willing to get behind.

Nice Job, Einstein

sloganeerist — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:22:00 -0700

In the early days of the Dry Era, nobody on the Federal Prohibition Bureau infiltrated and took down more NYC speakeasies than master-of-disguise agent Izzy Einstein and his partner, Moe Smith.

But sometimes it took more than clever deceit to fool a wary bootlegger. Sometimes it took cold, calculated honesty.

One of Izzy’s first assignments was to bust a Manhattan speakeasy that had a reputation for spotting revenue agents. With his badge affixed to his coat, he asked the proprietor, “Would you like to sell a pint of whiskey to a deserving Prohibition agent?”

The bar owner laughed and served him a drink. “That’s some badge you’ve got there,” he said. “Where’d ya get it?”

“I’ll take you to the place it came from,” Izzy replied, and escorted the man to the station.

Click through for a real nifty read from Smithsonianmag.com.

"You have your folk remedies or your comfort foods or your routine that all help just because they..."

kimlisagor — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:41:00 -0700

“You have your folk remedies or your comfort foods or your routine that all help just because they give solace … . But really a hangover is a physical process, or at least the result of one, and there do exist actual remedies that help reverse it.”

- Best day-after breakfast, according to science: eggs and a tropical smoothie.

Happy new year, Drinkers.

If you’re thinking about making a batch of Christmas gin,...

kimlisagor — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:00:58 -0700

If you’re thinking about making a batch of Christmas gin, now would be an excellent time to raid your neighbors’ juniper bushes. See those blueish-grayish berries? That’s what you’re looking for. Shake a branch and the ripe ones will fall right off.

For some reason, government landscapers seem to love this shrub. If you’re having trouble finding a good one, try the nearest public school (after hours, lest your motives for lurking in the bushes be mistaken) or courthouse (same).

A man, a woman, a caper and a bourbon

billbarol — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:00:00 -0700

“Tell it to me again,” Robin said. They were sitting in her kitchen with an open bottle of something called Black Maple Hill on the table between them. It was the color of very good, very expensive mahogany furniture and it tasted of cherries and caramel and wood smoke. They apparently aged the stuff for 21 years in white oak barrels down in Kentucky, and Albert paid about two hundred dollars a bottle for it. So far they’d downed a good hundred bucks’ worth. Finney had never cared much for bourbon, but he thought it was pretty much the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted.

That’s the introduction Ray Finney gets to Black Maple Hill bourbon in my just-published crime novel, Thanks for Killing Me. Finney’s a con man, and he’s good at it, but you could say he lacks what the professionals call “emotional intelligence.” That is, he’s the kind of guy who can be undone by a pretty face, and in Robin Tandy he’s more than met his match. Finney doesn’t know it yet, but Robin’s about to outsmart him, and all she needs is her brains and a bottle.

Not just any bottle, though. This is kind of a turning point in the story, and when I got to it in the writing I knew I needed a particular kind of spirit to make it turn. It needed to be smoothly, compulsively drinkable; it needed to be somewhat rare; it needed a flavor profile complex enough that Finney could plausibly spend a pivotal chapter trying to figure it out. There was really one spirit for the job, and I knew almost immediately that Black Maple Hill was it.

It’s almost incidental to this story that Black Maple Hill was the bourbon that turned me into a bourbon lover, because really, who cares? What’s much more relevant, and what made it a key player—the third character, in a way, in chapter five of my book—was this: Here was a drink that could plausibly mesmerize a guy who didn’t know anything about bourbons, as I hadn’t before I discovered it.

A good bourbon can do that to you. Black Maple Hill can do it in spades. Even in its base version, which is aged about eight years and sells for right around $40 a bottle, it’s smooth going down and rich in the sweetness that corn brings to its grain bill. There are also 14- , 16- and 21-year-old versions. (I picked the 21 for the book because it’s the top of the line, hard to find now, and would have plausibly been the choice of the guy who bought it, a fatuous oligarch named Tandy.) Really, any of the bottlings is delicious. Bourbon lovers will argue about whether the additional years in white oak give the 14 a perceptible edge over the 8, the 16 over the 14, the 21 over the 16. Discussions like these are, of course, part of what’s fun about a devotion to spirits. What all the bottlings have in common, though, is a satiny finish, a pleasantly light burn on the tongue (there seems to be less than the usual complement of rye, which gives some bourbons a more peppery character), and a balance of flavors and notes that can keep your palate enjoyably occupied for hours, or until you pass out. I taste vanilla, caramel, and something fruity that suggests apricot or black cherries. You might taste butterscotch, or honey. We might argue about it, in an amiable way.

“Are you getting, like, a hint of apple in this bourbon?”

“A little,” she said. “Keep going.”

“Right,” he said, slugging a big mouthful back. Maybe it wasn’t apples at all. Maybe it was apricots. There was also a definite burnt-nuts thing going on. You could spend your life trying to figure this stuff out, he thought.

This is exactly what I love about bourbon: It’s a puzzle of flavors. It spawns argument and analysis. At that, Black Maple Hill is more puzzling than most. There’s even controversy among aficionados about whose distillery actually produces the stuff. My friend Ron Givens, author of Bourbon at its Best, one of the indispensable texts on the subject, directed me to this post on Chuck Cowdery’s whiskey blog about Black Maple Hill’s provenance. Bottom line: It may or may not be produced by the distillers of Heaven Hill, which produces a wide variety of specialty bourbons. Ron further speculates that it may have been produced by other hands at other times.

Could there be a better spirit to use as the maguffin in a mystery novel? I can’t imagine there could. I only know that if it works at all in my book, and I encourage you to buy the book and judge for yourself, preferably in enormous quantities (the holidays are coming), it works because it’s a prime, delicious exemplar of the bourbon distiller’s art. Which is to say: You can study it, savor it, deconstruct it, as Finney does…

He was almost positive he was tasting a dash of brown sugar. And wasn’t that what butterscotch was, basically—brown sugar? But they melted it or something, he was pretty sure. The bourbon felt like a bolt of liquid velvet sliding down the back of his throat. Clearly, his palate was getting more and more sophisticated the more of the stuff he drank. There was only an inch or two left in the bottle, which struck him as very sad.

And maybe you’ll kill the bottle. But you’ll never get to the bottom of it.

Bill Barol’s Thanks for Killing Me is available now in paperback and ebook at Amazon, and also at the iTunes Music Store and barnesandnoble.com. More information can be found at thanksforkillingme.com.

Amazon and iBooks affiliate links

ourpresidents: Repeal of Prohibition - Elephants and Donkeys...

seoulbrother — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:49:08 -0700

ourpresidents:

Repeal of Prohibition - Elephants and Donkeys Celebrate Over a Barrel of Beer

During his 1932 presidential campaign, FDR promised to end Prohibition. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1921, prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors within the United States.

When Roosevelt took office in 1933, a constitutional amendment to repeal Prohibition was already making its way through the state legislatures. Roosevelt acted immediately to ease Prohibition with the Beer-Wine Revenue Act. Passed on March 22, 1933, this act legalized the sale of alcoholic beverages containing no more than 3.2 percent alcohol (this level was declared non-intoxicating). Prohibition was officially repealed by the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933.

This large, glass bowl commemorates the end of Prohibition with a series of seven vignettes imprinted in white, including a “G.O.P.” elephant and a “D.E.M.” donkey celebrating over a barrel of beer. The etched caption reads, “At Last!”

-From the Roosevelt Library. More at Today’s Document.

jasonpermenter: 1950. Cocktail hour at the Spencer residence in...

seoulbrother — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:56:36 -0700

jasonpermenter:

1950. Cocktail hour at the Spencer residence in Santa Monica. Note the mirror-view television sunken into the table. Architect: Richard Spencer. Color transparency by Julius Shulman. (found at Shorpy.com)

superseventies: 1970s Canadian Mist advertisement. Update:...

seoulbrother — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 12:40:00 -0700

superseventies:

1970s Canadian Mist advertisement.

Update: Turns out Canadian Mist’s “Misting” campaign was groundbreaking for liquor advertising.

gordonshumway: I may never leave this restaurant. Not sure...

kimlisagor — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:25:17 -0700

gordonshumway:

I may never leave this restaurant.

Not sure where this was taken, but here’s how they make a Bacon Old Fashioned at New York’s PDT.

oldhollywood: Dean Martin performs at the Copa Room (1957)....

seoulbrother — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:35:17 -0700

oldhollywood:

Dean Martin performs at the Copa Room (1957). That’s Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Debbie Reynolds, & Jack Benny at the front table (click to enlarge) (via)

“In 1969, Orson Welles told me that he’d been backstage in his own Dean Martin Show dressing room when, before the taping, Dean knocked, then came in, drink in hand. ‘Hey Orson,’ he said, holding up his glass, ‘you want one of these before we…?’

Orson shook his head. ‘No, no, Dean, I’m fine, thanks.” Martin looked shocked. “You mean you’re gonna go out there alone?!” Welles roared with laughter when he told me the story. ‘Alone!’ he repeated loudly. ‘Isn’t that great!?’ Orson went on, ‘That’s the best definition of addiction I’ve ever heard.’”

-Peter Bogdanovich (via)