In which I talk about laser beams and syphilis.
Category: camper_clips
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Alton Brown Recommends Doctors and Distillers
Sharing this write-up about my book from Alton Brown:
"Alton Brown has given us season after season of food television goodness with multiple shows, including the iconic Good Eats and most recently Good Eats: Reloaded and Good Eats: The Return. He’s also written his fourth Good Eatscookbook, Good Eats: The Final Years, a compilation of five seasons of applications (recipes) from Good Eats: Reloaded and Good Eats: The Return, including one season’s worth that Brown developed during the pandemic but hasn’t made into shows (and he’s not sure he ever will). It’s a hefty volume that will make you want to go back and binge watch Good Eats shows—after you’ve made yourself a nice snack, of course.
We asked Brown about the books he’s read and loved lately, and it’s a fun collection that includes a history of spirits (alcohol, not ghosts) and a book he calls the last word on written English."
He writes of my book Doctors and Distillers:
Mr. English, a leading writer on spirits and cocktails, has written a fascinating book examining the history of beer, wine, and spirits from a medical point of view. The scholarship here is as remarkable, but above all, this is great storytelling that clearly reveals the histories of medicine and spirits as intertwined and inseparable.
Buy the book here!
- Amazon
- Bookshop
- Barnes and Noble
- Books-A-Million
- Hudson Booksellers
- IndieBound
- Powell's
- Target
- Walmart
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Review of Doctors and Distillers in Publishers Weekly
My book Doctors and Distillers got a nice review in Publishers Weekly!
Cocktail and beverage writer English makes a spirited debut with this vibrant cultural history of alcohol’s transition from medicine to social lubricant. Gin and tonic, a popular concoction consumed by British soldiers in the 1800s to stave off disease and illness, for instance, incorporated “lime for scurvy, the fizzy water for anemia and other conditions, the quinine for malaria, and the gin as a diuretic.” English also looks at the ways in which “beer, wine, and fizzy spa water inspired great progress in medical science”: 12th-century physician Moses Maimonides prescribed wine for mad-dog bites, while the plague was combated with special beers. English knows his stuff, but he also knows how to have a good time. Cocktail recipes provided throughout are cheekily positioned: after a discussion of the maladies suffered by absinthe addicts, including “seizures, dementia, vertigo, hallucinations, violent outbursts… and epilepsy,” English offers up an absinthe and champagne drink called Death in the Afternoon. Distillations made by monks (including the Carthusians with their Chartreuse liqueur) and aperitifs and digestifs also get their historical due. For the curious imbiber, or simply those looking for a few choice trivia tidbits to drop at cocktail parties (sadly, Saint Bernards never wore little barrels of brandy around their necks to revive those lost in the Alps), this is a winner. (July)
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Books That Cite Camper English’s Work
The other month I came across a citation of something I wrote in a book that I'd not previously known about. This lead me to do a Google Books search to see if there were any more, and there were – a lot! So this post is more or less an item for my resume. I don't think I included books that only cite my work in the bibliography but in the body of the text in some way. Books That Cite, Quote, or Otherwise Mention Camper English
- The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails
- Return of the Artisan: How America Went from Industrial to Handmade
- Road Soda: Recipes and techniques for making great cocktails, anywhere
- Holy Waters: Searching for the Sacred in a Glass
- The Way of the Cocktail: Japanese Traditions, Techniques, and Recipes
- Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks–a Cool History of a Hot Commodity
- Tropical Standard: Cocktail Techniques & Reinvented Recipes
- Modern Caribbean Rum: A Contemporary Reference to the Region's Essential Spirit
- The Bartender's Pantry: A Beverage Handbook for the Universal Bar
- Strong, Sweet and Dry: A Guide to Vermouth, Port, Sherry, Madeira and Marsala
- Martini: The Ultimate Guide to a Cocktail Icon
- Cocktail Theory: A Sensory Approach to Transcendent Drinks
- This Is A Cocktail Book
- How to Be a Better Drinker: Cocktail Recipes and Boozy Etiquette
- American Whiskey Master Class: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Bourbon, Rye, and Other American Whiskeys
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English at Eater: Earthy Ube Purple Pina Coladas
I wrote a story for Eater San Francisco on a trend of purple drinks with coconut cream and usually ube as a flavoring.
Photos by @vivo.visuals, Melissa de Mata, @equal_parts_cocktail, Allison WebberYou should probably go read it.
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A Clear Ice Story at VinePair
VinePair writer Tim McKirdy wrote a story on How to Create Perfectly Clear Ice, so naturally he included Directional Freezing, and the method I created way back in 2009 using a picnic cooler.
This is just a quick post to link to it so that I don't forget. Check it out here.
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Clear Ice with Quotes from Me in Men’s Journal
Men's Journal did a story on directional freezing highlighting my cooler method of 11 years ago. Spoiler: It still works.
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Ice in the Wall Street Journal
I was interviewed for a story on ice that appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week.
Here's the story link if you have subscriber access.
The intro part that mentions me is below.
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The Pre-eminent Cocktail Ice Scholar
In this story in The Guardian, I'm mentioned as "perhaps the pre-eminent cocktail ice scholar," in the section about ice snobs.
I'll take it.
The story isn't about me at all, but it's a long read (no really, it's a very long read) about the packaged ice industry through the lens of one major ice provider, taking into account the history of ice in food in drink overall.
Writer George Reynolds did a great job with it and I've got it bookmarked to read again this weekend and chase down all the historical threads I didn't already know about.
Give it a read, I hope you enjoy nerding out on this stuff as I do.
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My Favorite (Nerdiest) Blog Posts About Cognac
Cognac has long been a category marketed as a luxury item like jewelry or precision watches: You don't need to know how it's made (they seem to be saying), just trust in the brand.
But over the years, particularly in the past couple years, I've been able to learn a bit more about the category. Like whisky and later gin (anyone remember when every brand's botanical mix was a secret?), cognac brands seem to be coming around to transparency. Consumers (nerds and otherwise) want to know where their food comes from, and their booze too.
Long story short, in this post I've pulled together some of my favorite previous cognac writing.
All About Cognac. This post, from 2009(!) is an intro to the category.
The Complicated Aging Process for Cognac, as Seen at Cognac Hardy. This (2015) was the first time I really got to know about how dynamic aging can be in cognac production.
What's the Difference Between Cognac and Armagnac? A charticle.
A Visit to Merlet Cognac and Liqueurs in France. I've been to a bunch of cognac distilleries (click the cognac tag at the bottom of this post to scroll through all the cognac posts) but this one was interesting because they also make liqueurs.
Between the Heart and the Tails, the 'Seconds'. A post dedicated to a narrow cut of cognac- and rum!
A Fascinating Interview with Remy Martin Cognac Cellarmaster Baptiste Loiseau. A really interesting (so says me) article that gets to the heart of what interests me about cognac: It is a directed exercise; cognac is crafted, not just blended from random barrels.
Ramping up Aromatics in Cognac: How Camus Does it. Camus cognac showing the numbers on how they try to make their cognac aromatic.
Cognac Hine series – A wrote a series of posts (sponsored by Hine importer Hotaling & Co) about how this brand of cognac is produced. I learned so much doing so, particularly around early landed cognac, aging conditions, and additives.
- Cognac from grapes to wine.
- Cognac distillation and the impact of distillation on the lees.
- Wood and barrels used for cognac.
- Aging conditions for cognac.
- The strange exception of early landed cognac.
- Dilution and Additives in Cognac.
I hope my fellow cognac nerds will take time to read through some of these.
