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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
Chartreuse Tastes Like Hell

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.)

March 26, 2009
Best Garnish Evar

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 a drink that consisted of cachaca and champagne poured over honeycomb. One end of the string was tied around the honeycomb; on the other end was a live garnish. As the honeycomb slowly dissolves, the string releases and the bee flies away.

That is amazing, though I don't know how close I'd want bees to my face while drinking cocktails. I would try that at home, but all I have to work with is large spiders.

March 20, 2009
Thujone Delivery Vehicle

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 the EU the limit is 35 parts per million as opposed to 10 in the USA.

The thujone is placed in 25% alcohol (most vodka is 40%, most absinthe is around 65%) then made less bitter according to the text on the website. So you get the minimum amount of flavor and the minimum amount of alcohol with the maximum amount of thujone.

Oh well, at least for once the website is pretty.

March 10, 2009
Camper’s Clampers Bonus: Plaque Pics

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.

March 8, 2009