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Alcademics in Mutineer Magazine

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.

April 22, 2009
Top 5 Beer Cocktails on Epicurious.com
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:
- The Stout Diplomat by Yanni Kehagiaras
- The Happy Mich by the Tippling Brothers
- The Cure by Gina Chersevani
My previous story for Epicurious was the Top 5 Absinthe Cocktails.
April 13, 2009
How Sweetened It Is

Here's the second of my two stories in the San Francisco Chronicle this weekend.

Spirits: Bartenders find new ways to sweeten the deal

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, April 10, 2009

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.

Read the story here.

April 11, 2009
Bartender Style

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.

On Location: Bartenders' personal style

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.

Read the rest and look at the pics here.

April 11, 2009
Eggsactly the Right Glasses for Easter Shots

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.

April 10, 2009
Here is that Drink I was Talking About

You know how I was blogging about that great new drink that's unavailable because there wasn't enough Hangar One chipotle vodka to put it on the menu?

Well, they heard the outcry, they delivered more chipotle, and now the Escondido Romano is on the menu at Nopa for all to enjoy as of yesterday. Hooray! Now go order 70 of them so I don't look like a jerk.

Alcademics: Bringing positive change to drink menus since 2009.

April 9, 2009
Easter Drinks For My Peeps

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

April 9, 2009
Easter Ice

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!

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

April 7, 2009
Hello, Wall Street!

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 the
distinctive, piney flavoring that distinguishes gin. And so might a
juniper soda appeal to gin lovers? The definitive response came from
drinks blogger Camper English: "The problem with non-alcoholic drinks
is their complete lack of alcohol," he wrote at his site,
Alcademics.com. "To me, this product sounds like it will pair
magnificently with leftover vodka to make a gin-free G&T." In other
words, what's the point?

Read it here.

April 4, 2009
Ice As Art

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 room powered by solar cells. Pictures suggest that it was interesting there; now, installed in a former boiler room, it’s like hell freezing over. Far above the case two fans blow two flags: one at the current wind speed of Mount McKinley, the other at the Bahamas’ Nassau airport’s. The piece looks like a weird cryogenic chamber and touches on environmentalism, earthworks, entropy, autobiography, and race (making an oblique reference to Matthew Henson, a black explorer who was with Robert Peary at the North Pole).

It seems kind of ironic to ship arctic ice to the Bahamas and then Williamsburg to show the plight of global warming, but whatever.

I can't help looking at the picture thinking it would make a cool feature at a bar. Instead of the walk-in vodka freezer, you have a see-through ice room with someone in there hacking up a giant ice block for cocktails. For more ice ideas, see the Index of Ice Experiements on Alcademics here.

April 1, 2009