Alcademics

Tag: Camper English

  • The Future of San Francisco Cocktails (Predicted By Me) in San Francisco Magazine

    SF Mag cover Feb 2018It has been many years since I have contributed to San Francisco Magazine, but now I'm back! In the new February Bars & Nightlife issue, I have ten stories loosely themed around "Future proofing the cocktail: How Bay Area drink makers are reinventing our favorite alcoholic beverages."

    Below is the intro with links to all ten stories and brief intros from me. 

     

    Two decades into the Bay Area’s cocktail awakening, you’d think that bars would have settled into a comfortable middle age—the imbibing equivalent of staying home to Netflix and chill. But you’d be wrong.

    Creativity stirs all over the region, and drink makers and bar owners continue to spin out new ways to stay relevant and keep us guessing: with secret menus, popup concepts, and menu launch parties; with vibrant drinks, exotic ingredients, and bar-specific spirits; with quality concoctions served at double the speed, thanks to newfangled juices and outsourced ice. And to meet the expanding demand for quality, novelty, and expediency in booze consumption, new clusters of great bars have sprung up not just in the East Bay but also to the north and south. These changes are often nuanced but pervasive, taking place across many bars in many precincts throughout the ever-thirsty Bay Area.

    Scanning the cocktail horizon, you can spot the big ideas and the small revisions that are changing the way we drink in 2018 and beyond. Here are 10 of them.

    Bartenders Are Going Straight to the Source 

    How bartenders are directing spirits creation from distillers. 

    Forget The Simple Description: These Are Very Complicated Cocktails

    A look into the mind of Adam Chapman from The Gibson.

    Wine Country Has An Unofficial Cocktail AVA

    Drinks at the fantastic Duke's and other Healdsburg cocktail bars. 

    The Future (and Present, Actually) Is Female

    Who runs the bars? Girls. A sampling of ten women running things in Bay Area Bars. 

    Asian Restaurants Are the Center of Cocktail Innovation

    Once the home of sake bombs and soju immitations of real drinks, now Asian restaurants are some of the most forward-looking. 

    Viking Drinks Are So Hot Right Now

    Aquivit will be everywhere in 2018.

    You'll Be Spending the Night in San Jose

    Paper Plane and other great bars in San Jose.

    Your Highball Intake Is About to Increase Dramatically

    Whiskey and other highballs are happening. 

    Outsourcing Is In

    Blind Tiger Ice and Super Jugoso are going to have a major impact on prep work in SF bars. 

    The Mission Has Only Just Begun 

    So, so many new bars are opening in the Mission District. 

     

    I've already got my next assignment for San Francisco Magazine, so hopefully this will be a regular thing. 

     

     

     

  • Camper English: Penthouse Model

    In the June issue of Penthouse, I have a travel story about my trip with Dos Equis to Playa Del Carmen. You can read the original posts here on Alcademics in part one, part two, and part three.  

    PenthouseJungleHuntJune2011Page1S

    I've written for Penthouse previously, but this is the first time I've appeared in its pages as a super sexy model. Check me out!

    PenthouseJungleHuntJune2011Page2S

    Hot stuff, right? 

  • In Which I Blather On About…

    …cocktail snobs versus geeks, micro and macro trends in cocktails, what drinks win cocktail contests, why I'm not sick of speakeasies, and much, much more.

    Read this interview with me on Mix Pour Sip.

    Camper english mix pour sipS

  • Working With Beverage Bloggers: DOs and DON’Ts

    The other day I gave a talk on social media at the WSWA convention in Orlando. The audience was mostly distributors, brand owners, and PR professionals.

    We had five people on the panel and just an hour to to talk, so naturally I was the last one to speak and we were already over our allotted time in the room. I had to make it fast so I condensed a ten-minute talk into about three minutes, which is longer than it will take you to read the rough outline of my talk below.

    Working With Cocktail Bloggers: DOs and DON'Ts

    DON'Ts

    1. Don't call, unless you are asked to call. 
    2. Don't send packages without your information or sell sheet. Mystery booze is nice but won't help you get press.
    3. Don't treat every blogger the same. The National Enquirer isn’t the same as Cat Fancy; it's the same way with blogs. Different bloggers publish different sorts of content- one person may review your blueberry vodka, another may publish recipes with it, and another might write an industry trend piece about the rise in berry flavors. Familiarize yourself with the top blogs and pitch accordingly.
    4. Don't think a blogger is obligated to write about your product just because you sent a sample or a recipe. Instead of following-up with “When will you be posting?”  try: “I hope you enjoyed the sample. Is there anything I can provide you with?” (Also, bloggers aren't obliged to respond to emails- we're busy too.)
    5. Don't block access to information. If a blogger has a question that only the master distiller can answer, do your best to get that answer. Be a conduit for information, not a roadblock.

    DOs

    1. Do create shareable content and shareable media, and give it away. Shareable content includes brand histories, tasting notes, distillery profile, and especially recipes. (And hire somebody to create good new recipes.) Shareable media includes photos (bottle shots, cocktail pictures, party shots from events, cell phone snaps from bar visits), videos (How-to-make cocktail videos, distillery virtual tour, live tasting with distiller), and projects (send out tools to help bloggers build their own content: a comparative tasting kit, home blending exercise, cocktail ingredients, bar tools,  punch bowls, etc.)
    2. Do Provide Incentives and Rewards. These include Samples: send large size ones and send them often. Someone reviewed your product positively? Send even more! Admission: to press events, parties, out for drinks with the brand ambassador, etc. Bloggers don't get as much love as traditional journalists, so a little bit of love goes a long way. Money: Some blogs charge for spirit reviews, recipe development, and of course ads, but you can also hire bloggers to cover events, to photograph cocktails, or to be the party photographer. Fame: If a blogger posts something about your brand, use your own social media tools to retweet, post on Facebook. etc. to drive traffic to the blog. The blogger gets more hits and the brand gets more attention. It's a win-win. 

    I focused on just my top tips. I welcome your additional suggestions in the comments.

    To see the slides from all speakers for this presentation, follow this link. Mine are last.

  • The Missing Caipirinha

    Leblon-caipirinhaM_lg I've been writing for Fine Cooking magazine's website for several months now, and realized they don't have a recipe for the Caipirinha online. Shameful. So in my latest post I wrote about the drink, the base spirit cachaca, and some variations. Check it out.

  • Sherry is to Tequila as Vermouth is to Whiskey

    Sherry and tequila are showing up together on more and more cocktail menus. I wrote a story about that in the Sunday, February 20th San Francisco Chronicle. 

    Del rio
    (Del Rio cocktail by Josh Harris of the Bon Vivants. Photo: Craig Lee)

    More drinks including Tequila and Sherry
    Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

    Sherry and Tequila are having a love affair. Bartenders are using more of each ingredient lately, but increasingly you'll see the two sneaking off in a drink together, canoodling in a corner of the cocktail menu.

    One of the first outward signs of this attraction came in the form of La Perla, a drink created several years ago by beverage consultant Jacques Bezuidenhout, which is still on the menu at Bourbon & Branch. The cocktail contains reposado (lightly aged) Tequila, manzanilla Sherry and pear liqueur.

    A not-too dissimilar flavor combination has popped up recently. At the Hideout at Dalva, a tiny backroom cocktail bar in the Mission District, Josh Harris serves the Del Rio. The drink is made with blanco, or unaged, Tequila, fino Sherry, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, plus a dash of orange bitters and a grapefruit zest.

    At Gitane, the Sherry-centric Claude Lane restaurant, bar manager Alex Smith and two other bartenders collaborated on a drink called the Flor Delice, made with reposado, manzanilla, St. Germain and orange bitters, plus maraschino liqueur.

    In New York, this combination shows up yet again on the menu at Mayahuel, a bar dedicated to Tequila and mezcal. The Suro-Mago uses blanco, manzanilla, elderflower and orange bitters, and adds a rinse of mezcal to give it a smoky touch.

     Read the rest of the story and get the recipe for the Del Rio, a simple and delicious drink.

  • High-Falutin’ Boozin’

    CaviarAffairCover Another magazine I write for that is not usually online is Caviar Affair, for which the tagline is, "Celebrating wordly indulgences and luxury living."

    That's so *me*, right? Actually it really is, except that other people indulge me in the luxury to which I've become accustomed.

    Anyhoo, they did put the new issue online. Unlike much of what I write for other publications, there is a definite emphasis in my stories for this magazine on stuff that you can buy, rather than, say, ruminations on flavor combinations and the deeper meaning of cocktail culture.

    The whole issue online is here.

    For this issue I wrote some stuff on vodka, some on rare scotch, a bit about my trip to Guatemala, and information about some new cocktail bars.

     

    CaviarAffairScotch

  • Big in Germany

    Mixology cover blood and sand I try to link to all my writing available online, but you really only see two-thirds or so of it. And even if you could see it all, most of us couldn't read it because it's in German.

    I am a regular contributor to Mixology magazine, based in Berlin, and for this magazine I write these insanely long stories usually about a single cocktail.

    I've written 2000 words about eggnog, 2500 on the Blood and Sand, and 4000 words on the Mai Tai.

    All of it gets translated into German so when I see the print version I can't read it but I like to look at the pictures. 

    One picture that I particularly enjoyed seeing was this cover illustration for my eggnog story.

     

    Mixology Mag Cover Eggnog

    I don't know if I've ever had the cover image before, so that's pretty awesome. (Update: Realized I've had it twice before- sweet!)

    I shall now use this ego boost to get me through my next story, which is 2500 words on the Caipirinha, due tomorrow.

     

  • Sherry, Reconsidered in the Los Angeles Times Magazine

    **Update: This story is no longer on the LA Times Magazine website, so I have pasted it here.

     

    In yesterday's LA Times Magazine I have a huge feature on sherry.

    Sherry2 (photographs by Nigel Cox)

    As a wine category, sherry has practically everything going for it: a tremendous range of flavors, a rich history dating at least as far back as the Romans, the ability to pair magnificently well with food and an increasingly hip status as a cocktail ingredient used by top bartenders.

    Most people, when they think of sherry at all, consider it an ingredient their grandmothers cooked with rather than something ripe for sipping on its own. Sherry is about due for a comeback, but it’s so unfamiliar to us now that it really needs a thorough reintroduction.

    The story features eight drink recipes from the lofty likes of Murray Stenson, Andrew Bohrer, Alex Day, Zahra Bates, Kenta Goto and Audrey Saunders, Brian Miller, Neyah White, and Kevin Deidrich.

    Go read the story, and then go make the drinks!

    Sherry3 (photographs by Nigel Cox)

  • The Martini Does Not Exist

    The word 'Martini' has very little meaning.

    Two versions of the cocktail may have completely different ingredients and be served in different formats: A bone-dry-and-dirty Grey Goose Martini on the rocks with extra olives has nothing in common with a Fifty-Fifty gin Martini with orange bitters and a twist. They're not even close to the same drink – in ingredients, in format, or in purpose.

    Martinilatimes

    More than that, the Martini no longer exists even as a drink concept. It means different things to different people: strength, dryness, elegance, simplicity, an aperitif, glassware, crispness, an era in time, an intellectual challenge, etc.. Some of its concepts are mutually exclusive.

    This conundrum surfaced when in New Zealand last year for the 42Below Vodka Cocktail World Cup, in which they had a Modern Martini challenge. The problem was that nobody agreed on what the Martini was, so everyone updated it in a different way.  Most of those ways differed from the judges' concept of the drink.

    The Martini is as amorphous a concept as morality.

    In this Sunday's Los Angeles Times Magazine, I wrote a story about how the Martini Does Not Exist, except in the mind of the individual.

    I'm pretty happy with how it came out. After going through the issues involved with the concept of the drink (and revealing how that cocktail contest turned out), the story lists the Martini recipe as a moving target throughout the years.

    Please give it a read.