Alcademics

Category: camper_clips

  • Nice Ice in the News

    The Associated Press released the following story on ice today, with a quote from your favorite icesperimentator Camper English. The whole story is here.

    SIP: Bartending trend calls for nice ice, baby

    By MICHELLE LOCKE
    Associated Press Writer

    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Erik Adkins spends a lot of time on ice.

    As general manager of the Heaven's Dog bar in San Francisco he's very particular about what ice goes into his cocktails, preferring hand-carved chunks for slow-sipping drinks and oversized clear cubes for lighter concoctions.

    And that's just the tip of the ice trend.

    Driven by the same quest for perfection that elevated bread, cheese and wine to objects of desire, ice has entered an epicurean age, coming in new shapes and sizes.

    Then I get the closing quote:

    On the other hand there's Camper English, a San Francisco-based writer and cocktail expert, who has blogged about his search for clarity, melting and refreezing ice at home to see if that decreases cloudiness and experimenting with distilled water.

    So far he hasn't been too successful, but that hasn't curbed his enthusiasm.

    "Ice is one of the fun projects that cocktail nerds can play with at home," he says.

    He'll go to some lengths for a chill thrill.

    "One time I caught myself asking a bartender to see their ice when I was making my drink order," he recalls, "because it was going to matter to me."

    Read the whole thing here and see the Index of Ice Experiments on Alcademics here.

  • Every Day with Camper English

    Rachel Ray Magazine story by Camper EnglishRun screaming to your local newsstand to pick up November's issue of Everyday With Rachael Ray
    magazine. I have a story in the issue about how to go out drinking with your hometown friends on the night before Thanksgiving without ending up hungover when you've got to cook all the next day.

    Naturally, the advice works for any long night of barhopping and when you don't have to do diddly squat the next day, and there is even a quick and tasty mocktail recipe included.

    Rachel Ray Magazine story by Camper English hangovers

  • Beverages by the Bowlful in San Francisco Magazine

    My latest story in San Francisco Magazine is online here. The pictures are way better in the print version.

    punch at rickhouse in san francisco 

    Beverages by the bowlful

    By Camper English, Photograph by Shaun Roberts

    Though
    punch predates the classic cocktails San Franciscans have been sipping
    for the past few years, it has taken a while for local mixologists to
    commit to it. But in this post-ultralounge era of quieter celebration
    and more complicated drinks, well-crafted booze in bulk makes a lot
    more sense than the overplayed bling of bottle service at nightclubs.
    With punch, you’re paying for an expertly prepared, jumbo-size
    cocktail, instead of a marked-up and underchilled bottle of vodka (plus
    mixers).

    I describe what's going on, the punch at Rickhouse, and where else to drink from the bowl around town. The rest is online here, and in the September issue of San Francisco Magazine.

  • Bartenders Hitting Their Hoes

    For some reason, the San Francisco Chronicle didn't choose the above title for my story that comes out Sunday August 30th. I can't think of why.

    More bars growing own cocktail ingredients

    Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

    Friday, August 28, 2009

     Victoria D'Amato-Moran grows tomatoes, Asian pears, Fuji apples, blackberries, roses and many herbs in her South San Francisco garden. Sooner or later, everything in it winds up in her cocktails.

    "Except the zucchinis," she says. "I haven't figured out how to use those yet."

    Gartenders2

    The Bay Area has long been home to the farm-forward cocktail movement – initially personified by Scott Beattie, then of Cyrus restaurant, who sourced produce from neighbors' fruit trees for his bar. Lately, more bartenders are doing the gardening work themselves, for the same reason that backyard gardeners seem to have appeared everywhere.

    The extra effort may not save money, and the drinks may not taste noticeably fresher to the customer, but you can bet they do to the proud garden tender who grew part of your gimlet from seed.

    Read the rest of my story in this Sunday's Chronicle about bartenders who also tend to gardens, including Duggan McDonnell, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Daniel Hyatt, Scott Stewart, Thad Vogler, and Lane Ford, and the bars Fairway Cocktail Lounge, Cyrus, Elixir, Alembic, Cantina, Fifth Floor, Bar Agricole, Starbelly, Sprcue, Brix, and Etoile. Gosh I'm thorough.

    Also: there's a recipe for Jacques Bezuidenhout's Sagerac, a version of the Sazerac made with fresh picked sage, and Scott Stewart's Lonsdale No. 3 made with fresh basil.

    Gartenders1

  • Ginger Beer Gives a Buck more Bang

    My latest story in the San Francisco Chronicle (from Sunday's paper) went online today. Read it here.

    Erickcastrorickhouse

    Ginger beer gives a buck more bang

    Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

    Friday, July 24, 2009

    When ginger ale or beer is mixed with citrus in a drink, it is – or more accurately, was – known as a buck.

    Early cocktail books list recipes for the gin buck or London buck cocktail, and variations of rum bucks were called the Shanghai buck, Jamaica buck or Barbados buck, depending on the type of rum used. If you squeeze your lime garnish into a Dark 'n' Stormy, you've got a rum buck.

    "The buck is one of those cocktails that works with every base spirit," says Erick Castro, beverage director at Rickhouse, the new Financial District bar. "Most cocktails don't work with gin and scotch and vodka and rum."

    Read more about bucks and mules and get the recipe for Erick Castro's Kentucky Buck here.

  • The Count of San Francisco

    Silly me, I didn't even notice that my story on Count Niccolo Branca of Fernet-Branca was in this month's San Francisco Magazine. Here it is.

    The count comes a-courting

    Bottle talk with the CEO behind San Francisco's favorite shot, Fernet-Branca.

    By Camper English, Photograph by Cody Pickens

    Branca

    San Franciscans consume around 35 percent of all the Fernet-Branca
    sold in the United States, thanks mostly to the local palate, which
    tends to skew toward bitter. Recently, the chairman and CEO of Branca
    International (and the great-great-grandson of Fernet’s creator), Count Niccolò Branca,
    paid a visit to San Francisco to meet with bartenders and visit
    high-selling accounts. We met him at Foreign Cinema, where he shared
    some company lore and addressed a few persistent rumors about the brand.

    Branca
    says he hasn’t been to town for about 25 years, though San Franciscans
    have repeatedly tried to visit his distillery in Milan, where all the
    Fernet-Branca imbibed in the States is made. “Sometimes they come on
    Saturday or Sunday, when the company is closed. Monday morning, we find
    on the door a paper—they write, ‘I want to visit. I see where is born
    the Fernet-Branca,’” the count reports. And now they can, since the
    distillery and its museum have finally opened for tours (by
    appointment).

    Branca insists that his bitter liqueur has never
    contained opiates, as some have alleged over the years. His evidence is
    circumstantial but still convincing: Opiate possession is currently
    prohibited in Italy, and he says the recipe for Fernet-Branca hasn’t
    changed in the 164 years it’s been produced. But he assured us that a
    couple of perceptions are true: one, that drinkers across the world ask
    for Fernet-Branca served “San Francisco–style,” meaning a shot
    accompanied by a ginger ale chaser; two, that Fernet-Branca remained
    legal during Prohibition because of its medicinal qualities.

    The count complimented San Franciscans on our pronunciation of his product’s name (fur-net), which he hears incorrectly all over the world. “Even in Italy, some people say fur-nay,” he explains. “But the important word is Branca!

  • Drinks to Match the Dress

    San Francisco bartender pairs cocktail with cocktail dress

    Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

    Sunday, July 12, 2009

    Many cocktail contests now require bartenders to pair drinks with meals or invent them on the spot with a secret ingredient, but a recent competition challenged mixologists around the world with a new pairing: cocktails with cocktail dresses.

    Jacqueline Patterson, a bartender at Heaven's Dog in San Francisco, was the winning bartender from the United States. Accessorize 2009 was sponsored by Cherry Heering, a liqueur that the brand owners call an "accessory" in cocktails such as the Singapore Sling.

    Read the rest of my latest story in the San Francisco Chronicle here.

    Jackiesingapore
    Jackiesingaporedrink

  • The Intercontinental Cocktails of Charles H. Baker

    I wrote a story in this weekend's San Francisco Chronicle about Charles H. Baker's cocktails and their popularity, centering around the program at Heaven's Dog in San Francisco.

    "A hazy memory of a night in Havana during the unpleasantnesses of
    1933, when each swallow was punctuated with bombs going off on the
    Prado…"

    erik adkins read charles h baker's the gentlemans' companion at heaven's dog in san francisco This line by Charles H. Baker Jr. introduces not an account of Cuban
    rebellion but the cocktail Remember the Maine, which he was drinking
    there while it took place. Baker wrote about drinks from his travels
    around the world in the early 1900s, mostly during Prohibition, when
    the drinking in the United States wasn't legal – or very good.

    Other drinks in Baker's two-volume "The Gentleman's Companion" are
    introduced from such ports of call as Beijing, Monte Carlo and Bombay
    (now Mumbai), ripe with mentions of princes, peacocks, cruises up the
    Nile and hanging out with Hemingway.

    Bartenders in particular have latched on to Baker as a patron saint
    of good living, and his cocktails and quotes from his writings are both
    appearing on drink menus.

    "I've always thought that when you have a drink there's so much that
    comes with it: your friends, who you're with, the time of the day,"
    says Erik Adkins, general manager of Heaven's Dog in SoMa. "And (Baker)
    captured all that.."

    But for all the excitement about Baker's cocktails, they share an unfortunate common trait.

    "I think the recipes mostly need a lot of work," says Adkins.

    read the rest of the story here.

    In the story I also mentioned the forthcoming coffee/cocktail bar Fort Defiance, in Brooklyn, that should be opening later this month. But that's not the only bar to put Baker back on the menu:

    The Brooklyn bar Clover Club dedicated a small section of the menu to what owner Julie Reiner says are Baker’s best cocktails this winter, including the Remember the Maine.

    In Portland, Ore., the bar Beaker and Flask, named for the subtitle of one volume of “Gentleman’s Companion,” is set to open. Owner Kevin Ludwig says he’ll be featuring Baker drinks on the menu, though not exclusively.

    In Amsterdam, speakeasy-style bar door 74 recently offered several pages of Baker drinks, with the menu letterhead mimicking the Baker’s own.

    Baker's globe-hopping cocktail book is now helping those cocktails hop back around the world.

    Bakerbookfromchron

  • Alcademics in India

    TelegraphCalcutta04252009cover Alcademics was mentioned in The Telegraph, a newspaper in Calcutta, India, in a big story on cocktail blogging. Also mentioned were CocktailChronicles, TheLiquidMuse, KaiserPenguin, SpiritsAndCocktails, MyAchingHead, IntoxicatedZodiac, and Cocktailians. 

    The global takeover continues!

    TelegraphCalcutta04252009  

  • Alcademics En Espanol

    Vinosyrestaurantescover The Alcademics global onslaught continues! This time the site has been mentioned in the Spanish magazine Vinos y Restaurantes.

    My Spanish translation skills aren't what they used to be, but I'm pretty sure it says, "Alcademics is the most awesome cocktail blog in the universe, and everyone knows it."

    VinosyRestaurantes