Author: Camper English

  • Easter Drinks For My Peeps

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    I made these marshmallow peep straws by poking a skewer through the peep, then sliding a straw down the skewer. Fun.

  • Easter Ice

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    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…

  • Hello, Wall Street!

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    Hey, did y'all see Alcademics quoted in the Wall Street Journal this weekend? Wahoo! Why Do Mocktails Fall Flat?By Eric Felten Last year the Dry Soda brand of very lightly sweetened fizzy drinks came out with a new flavor, "juniper berry," which it advertised as "the perfect 'non-alcoholic gin and tonic.'" Juniper, of course, is…

  • Ice As Art

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    Gawking at ice isn't just for cocktail nerds anymore! I saw this art review in New York Magazine of an exhibit at Boiler in Williamsburg. In 2004, Strachan cut a 2.5-ton block of ice from the Alaskan Arctic, shipped it to the Bahamas (where he’s from), and exhibited it there in a hermetically sealed refrigerated…

  • Chartreuse Tastes Like Hell

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    So says Rachel Maddow on the Jimmy Fallon show. (Okay, she says it tastes like hell until you mix it with other stuff.) Rachel makes a Bijou cocktail for Jimmy (gin, sweet vermouth, Chartreuse, orange bitters) in this segment of the show. (It's near the end of the second break.)

  • Best Garnish Evar

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    Cachacagora spotted this quote from the Sydney Morning Herald's interview with Max Warner of Chivas: Q What's the strangest drink you've ever been served? A In South America, there are large and sleepy bees and the kids wrap cotton threads around them while they're asleep so they end up on a leash. I was served…

  • Thujone Delivery Vehicle

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    Wow- This is a great animated website, promoting a product in cool bottles with limited edition goth-style art. It's too bad about what's in those bottles. They have the European legal maximum amount of thujone, the chemical in grand wormwood that is the supposed hallucinogenic (but isn't really unless you poison yourself with it). In…

  • Camper’s Clampers Bonus: Plaque Pics

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    As a bonus supplement to my story in the SF Chronicle on E Clampus Vitus, here are pictures I took of the historic plaques located around SF. I didn't get a picture of the Anchor Brewing or Molloy's Tavern in Colma, but here are the other four. Bonus: Bummer and Lazarus plaque.

  • Camper Meets the Clampers

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    Though we like to think the interest in classic cocktails is a recent one, the members of E Clampus Vitus have been celebrating drink history since the year 5937. That date – 1932 in our years – corresponds with the rebirth of an organization commonly called ECV, or the Clampers, whose motto, Credo Quia Absurdum,…

  • Bar Stars of SF

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    The SF Chronicle's Bar Stars 2009 feature just came out, and the introduction to the winners is here. The 2009 Bar Stars are: Reza Esmali of Conduit Brooke Arthur of Range Marcovaldo Dionysos of Clock Bar Cate Whalen of Pizzaiolo Thad Vogler of Heaven's Dog I did the write-up of Thad Vogler. I think the…