Alcademics was mentioned in The Telegraph, a newspaper in Calcutta, India, in a big story on cocktail blogging. Also mentioned were CocktailChronicles, TheLiquidMuse, KaiserPenguin, SpiritsAndCocktails, MyAchingHead, IntoxicatedZodiac, and Cocktailians.
The global takeover continues!
The Alcademics global onslaught continues! This time the site has been mentioned in the Spanish magazine Vinos y Restaurantes.
My Spanish translation skills aren't what they used to be, but I'm pretty sure it says, "Alcademics is the most awesome cocktail blog in the universe, and everyone knows it."
In the April/May issue of Mutineer magazine, there is a 12-question survey with a bunch of cocktail bloggers, including your pal Camper of Alcademics.
It's fun to see how different answers are on some topics (making your own ingredients, ingredients we'd like to see used more) and how similar on others (absinthe, vodka vs. gin).
The magazine, while still finding itself editorially, seems to be coming together rapidly. This issue is a big improvement over the others I've seen. They've got a more equal distribution of writing on wine, beer, and spirits, and have expanded into coffee as well.
A subscription is ten bucks for one year (six issues)- less than the price of a cocktail in many bars.
Hey look, I wrote another story for Epicurious.com!
It's the Top 5 Beer Cocktails, including ones you know like the Shandy and Black Velvet, plus ones that are probably new to you:
My previous story for Epicurious was the Top 5 Absinthe Cocktails.
Here's the second of my two stories in the San Francisco Chronicle this weekend.
Spirits: Bartenders find new ways to sweeten the deal
Nearly all cocktails contain a sweetening agent, the simplest of which is raw sugar or simple syrup. Other, newer options include ginger, elderflower, and blood orange liqueurs, floral sugar syrups, fresh grenadine, flavored honey, and syrups made from ingredients like agave and gum Arabic.
As usual, San Francisco bartenders are not satisfied with the selection.
I have two stories in this Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle. The first one is on bartender style, with man-on-the-street shots taken at the St. George Spirits distillery during the American Distilling Institute conference last weekend.
Camper English, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, April 10, 2009
Bartenders' outfits are largely dictated by the venues in which they work: dapper attire in hotel bars, uniforms in chain restaurants, trendier fashions in nightclubs and rumpled T-shirts in dive bars. And one gets the impression that bartenders choose their employers based on their personal style, rather than the other way around.
Well, maybe not eggsactly. As you can see these have holes. I taped the bottoms but the one on the right still leaked.
These are fancy new high-tech "hinged" eggs. The old boring ones without holes would be better at holding liquids.
I made these marshmallow peep straws by poking a skewer through the peep, then sliding a straw down the skewer. Fun.
You know how I made those cool ice balls before? Well, they really come out looking more like eggs, which inspired me to make some ice eggs for Easter cocktails. Again I just used water balloons filled at the sink.
Note: I experimented with water to see if the powder inside the balloons was changing the taste of the drinks. It does a little, but this can be softened. Since I have to fill these from the tap, the influence of tap (versus filtered) water is present. But I noticed a big improvement when I rinsed these balloons after freezing to remove a slight plasticy taste. So: rinse before filling, then rinse the outside of the ice after freezing.
Then I got to thinking: clear eggs are boring. This is Easter, after all, and the only thing good about Easter is decorating Easter eggs. (Revision: the brunch drinks are another good thing.)
So after filling my balloons with water but before tying them, I added a drop of food coloring to the balloon stem then tied them up. The results are awesome!
