In my latest story for Details.com, I asked bartenders which new gins they love to drink.
I only included ones with multiple recommendations, and here is a list of 13 that rose to the top. I tried to limit them to gins launched in the last two years, though there may be an exception or two.
Rev your G&T with these new gins.
In the new issue of Cheers Magazine, I was interviewed by writer Kelly Magyarics about ice.
She covered topics relevant to bartenders, such as machines, molds, making ice in industrial quantities, the Aviary's ice program, etc.
You can read the online magazine (page 32) at this link.
In my latest story for Details.com, I wrote about the return of apples in cocktails and spirits.
The story mentions the return to drinks after the great Appletini shame and lists a ton of mostly-new apple products.
There is a lot of ice awesomeness on one page of Saveur magazine's website.
In the June/July Drink insert in the magazine I wrote a story on how to break down an ice block into big cubes, spheres, spears, cobbler, shaved, crushed, and other ice shapes.
Instructions are on the page, along with a very brief history of the ice trade.
To accompany the story, Richard Boccato from Hundredweight Ice in New York went to the Saveur studio and broke down an ice block.
The pieces of ice he made are shown in the images above (and there are a lot more on the site). Saveur also made a lovely video of the process. Here's a still from the video:
You can see his techniques and tools in the video, plus it's just pretty. The video is at the bottom of this page.
Then, on another page I suggest some ice tools to buy. The chisel was Boccato's suggestion. I'm getting used to using it still, but it makes sense.
Finally, I also describe how to make clear ice at home.
Of course, you've probably already read how to do that here on Alcademics.
So that should satisfy your ice needs for today.
In the June/July Drink insert in Saveur magazine, I have a bunch of small drink stories.
One of them was inspired by my small obsession with airline drink menus, and it's called Sky High.
It's about how you can sometimes find interesting regional spirits on regional airlines. It was surprisingly hard to track these down and sometimes it was chasing a moving target as airlines changed from one spirit to another.
Anyway, give it a read.
This morning the four finalists in each category of the Tales of the Cocktail 2014 Spirited Awards were announced.
As mentioned previously, your host Camper English (for Best Writer) and this website Alcademics (for Best Publication) were on the long list.
Alcademics.com has made it through to the four finalists for the Best Publication. Hooray! Not bad for a mostly-one-person operation.
The other finalists are Imbibe Magazine (for which I also write), Punch Magazine, and Ginger Magazine from France (which I can't seem to locate online).
The winner will be announced at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards celebration on July 19th.
Thank you for reading!
In the Drink insert in Saveur Magazine for the June/July issue, I wrote a small story about the very cool mustache teacups at Dead Rabbit.
In the Summer 2014 issue of Whisky Advocate magazine I have two articles.
This is a rye-themed issue and it's pretty great, so you should probably just get a subscription or run out to a retail store that carries it. They don't typically put anything from the print magazine online so that's the only way to read these.
Advanced-Level Barrel Aging – Of Cocktails
Bartenders are doing some amazing things with barrel aging. In the story I cite new/cool/innovated techniques from:
Phew, that was a lot of bars to include in a one-page article.
The Rituals of Rye
Now that rye whiskey is back, what do you do with it? This story has a lot of new cocktails (like, a lot of cocktails), but I think the really interesting part is about which classic cocktails demand rye versus bourbon.
It includes recipes and/or quotes from:
Nathan Burdette of Los Angeles
Jonathan Smolensky of Canada
Vincent Toscano of Rye in San Francisco
Brad Peters of Hock Farm Craft & Provisions in Sacramento
Enzo Errico of Milk & Honey, New York City
Audrey Saunders of Pegu Club, New York City
Brian MacGregor of Wingtip, San Francisco
Chris Neustadt of Jimmy at the James Hotel in Chicago
Brian Means of Fifth Floor Restaurant, San Francisco
Anthony DeSerio of Splash restaurant in Guilford, Connecticut
Ted Kilgore of St. Louis
Andrew Freidman, Liberty, Seattle
Molly Wellmann of Japp's in Cincinnati, Ohio
Michael Callahan, Bartender-At-Large in Singapore
Abigail Gullo of SoBou in New Orleans
Tamir Benshalom, Bull Valley Roadhouse in Port Costa, California
Geof Anderson of Annunciation Restaurant in New Orleans
Ray’s and Starck Bar in Los Angeles
The Passenger in DCAudio Discotech in California
Elixir in San Francisco
Barrel in Washington DC
Pick up a copy!
In the June/July issue of Saveur Magazine, I have a bunch of drink stories. The biggest, longest one, which took me a few months of research to put together, is on the Gin & Tonic.
It has a bunch of history, a bunch of recipes, and a bunch of tasting notes.
The main text of the story is here.
Types of gins with different flavor profiles are here.
Bottled tonic waters and tonic syrups are here.
And recipes include:
Plymouth G&T from Barceloneta in Miami
Saveur magazine has an insert in the June/July issue that is a mini-magazine called Drink. I wrote a handful of stories for it.
I'll post them as they show up online (get excited, ice fans!), but the first to appear is a story on ginger beer. It's a bit of history, a bit about the difference between ginger ale and beer, and several recipes for drinks that show how it goes with everything:
I'm not sure if the Chilcano (pisco) will appear anywhere, but that's a pretty easy one to figure out.
The main story with fun illustrated recipes as above is here.
Or to see the recipes written in normal format, you can follow this link.