Author: Camper English

  • Wild Tofurkey

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    Camper English
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    It's almost Thanksgiving, and that means all the booze news is full of stories on what to pair with your turkey. Phooey. As you know, the entire staff here at Alcademics HQ (me) is vegetarian, so I don't play that game. But I do like Thanksgiving, as it's a holiday centered around pigging out and…

  • The Craziest New Cocktail Menu in San Francisco

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    Camper English
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    DOSA Fillmore opens on Friday, but the drink menu for the restaurant has been released. The cocktails were created by Jonny Raglin of Absinthe, and they look insane. I can't wait to try them. Batsman Martin Miller’s Gin, Darjeeling tea cordial, lemon juice & ginger beer, served over ice with a mint sprig 9 Bowler…

  • Whisky + Shipwreck = Awesome

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      I have a fondness for booze, as you may have realized, but also for shipwrecks and pirates. (Old pirates, not Somali pirates.) So I am particularly thrilled by the story of the SS Politician, a ship carrying 260,000 bottles of whisky that sank off the Outer Hebrides (islands off Scotland) in 1941. The local…

  • Alcademics on Epicurious on Absinthe

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    Camper English
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    Hey Look! It's my first story for Epicurious.com! Wahoo! The Top Five Absinthe Cocktails Now that absinthe is legal in America, what are you going to do with it? I share some information about absinthe and suggest the five best cocktails in which to use it.

  • Hotel Wine MacGuyver

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    Camper English
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    Say you find yourself in a hotel room on a cold London night, caught in a bout of sleep-free jetlag, but prepared to take the edge off with a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, you forget to bring a corkscrew. You don't have any cash to tip room service for bringing one up. What do you…

  • Clearly a Failure

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    There are various methods people use to make the clearer ice. To remove the air bubbles that make ice cloudy, people suggest boiling or refreezing the water. I decided to give a few options a try to see what worked best. But as we'll see, my results are less than conclusive. Using individual sized apple…

  • A day with Charbay

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    Camper English
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    The other week I sat down on the patio behind Swirl on Castro with Marko Karakasevic and Jenni soon-to-be Karakasevic of Charbay and tasted through their line of products. Charbay is a family-run winery and distillery in Napa Valley. And boy do these people like to play with the still- in addition to wine, they…

  • Icefusions

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    Gourmet.com has a story about a bartender making ice infused with herbs and spices like dried cherry, cardamom, and clove, which open up in cocktails and add new flavors to the drink as they melt. I've had ice made from coconut water and bitters-infused ice before, but this is a new idea to me. Think…

  • Look at me, err, at what I wrote

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    Camper English
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    I have a story in the latest issue of Malt Advocate– my first one for them. Hooray! It's a round-up of whisky events at Tales of the Cocktail and the increased presence of whisky at the event in general. Run screaming to your local newsstand and read it. You'll find my story right beneath the…

  • The Gentleman’s Companion’s Companion

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    The Gentleman's Companion by Charles H. Baker is one of the most entertaining historical cocktail books, if not always the most useful. It contains cocktail recipes gathered from Baker's travels around the world, but the best parts are the drink introductions and settings. Like this one: THE JAMAICAN BLACK STRIPE, another Heartener from that Tropical…