Have you tried Pimm's? It sounds like it would be up your alley.
I'm not a whiskey (or whisky) drinker myself, which is slightly weird as a I like other booze with a smokey flavour like stout and rauchbier.
"too sweet" is totally a reasonable opinion to have of brown spiruts. You might like some of the drier ones, like Paul
Giraud Cognac or Old Overholt or Bulleit Rye.
In general rye is a lot less sweet than bourbon. Scotch is a lot less sweet than bourbon, too, but it has some other things going on that some people (*cough* Blume *cough*) are not so much into.
Some whiskeys are pretty sweet, yes. Something like Evan Williams makes me think it's Heaven Hill plus a concentrated whiskey flavor syrup.
What does "brown spirits" mean, aside from "whiskey"? Brandy?
I have tried Pimms! Maybe only once, but it was delicious.
I like rye much more because it's less sweet than bourbon, but definitely use bourbon medicinally. And because I'm locally patriotic, I suppose. I've never done the Bourbon Trail thing, which is a big deal around here, but the friend whose farm we visit works as a bourbon engineer!
Bourbongineer somehow is too close to beer-bong-ineer.
Without knowing what you drank, it's impossible to know whether your opinion made sense or was alien. Jack Daniels? Yes, very sweet. Bulleit Rye (or any of the other ryes coming out of this factory in Indiana), not sweet.
I also hear that this IN distillery is a relatively good place to work, for factory work. There certainly aren't a lot of better alternatives in that town, so that's one good thing.
Apparently I types that comment too slowly.
I find that brown liquors give me a headache and clear ones don't.
8: I'm partly trolling Halford with that so that he'll have to decide whether the intangible benefits outweigh the pure financial ones of being a petroleum engineer. I assume the answer will be that the latter makes you enough money to buy whatever alcohol you want.
Canadian whiskey tends to be sweet as well, but not bourbon flavored.
13: only the ones someone else is already making.
Another vote for rye over bourbon.
Although I've started exploring cocktails made with a base of craft Gin this year.
It helps me get in touch with my inner WASP.
I also don't understand "brown liquor" and "clear liquor" as coherent groups. Yes, bourbon is sweet, as is Jack Daniels; try some Islay scotch instead.
it's likely that this is all very similar to how wine is made. there are vineyards, wineries and bottlers. sometimes the same company does all three, sometimes a company will do two of the three and contract out for the other. sometimes it only does one. and sometimes a company doesn't do anything but put labels on bottles of wine that they had nothing to do with making or bottling. and then there are farmers who sell grapes to anyone who will buy.
so, if this distillery is just doing the capital-intensive (and heavily regulated) job of distilling other companies' mash, then it's not a huge issue., IMO. if it's making the whole product, start to finish, then it's the analogue of the people who put labels on anonymous wine that they bought wholesale.
scotch > rye > bourbon
and cognac is a good brown liquor, too.
20.2: My understanding from this article and others like it I've seen over the last few months is that there's a little of both, that a few places are putting out the MGP product almost unchanged while for others it's one component among many.
I've never done the Bourbon Trail thing
YOU HAVE DIED OF CIRRHOSIS.
YOU HAVE DIED OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
if it's making the whole product, start to finish
It is.
25.
the article mentions at least one brand where the maker stirs up his own blend ingredients, cooks them, stirs them, etc., then sends that off to MGP for distillation. that's not start to finish. and then there's aging, which also adds flavor. the article mentions at least one company that buys MGP's liquor then ages it in its own barrels.
i'm no expert, but it seems that distillation is the least likely of the steps to modify flavor. the raw ingredients and their preparation is probably the most important, since that's where you determine the type of liquor your making (ex. rye v bourbon), then there's the fermentation step. then there's distillation which boils the mash and collects the alcohol. then there's aging, which adds wood flavor and mellows it all out.
"bourbon hating", not so much. "bourbon sweetness awareness".
Bourbon is delicious. I just want to make clear that I am the farthest from Team Bourbon Hater. I am Team Hooray For Booze.
26.1: yes, but I don't know how to read.
I like the taste of whisky [Scotch], and bourbon a good deal. However, Scotch really disagrees with me. Instant heartburn after more than one or two smallish glasses. So I rarely drink it. I suppose it's a good thing that I rarely drink any spirits, from a liver point of view.
Many Scotch whiskies aren't sweet at all. They can be very dry, and aromatic.
Although I've started exploring cocktails made with a base of craft Gin this year.
It helps me get in touch with my inner WASP.
So awesome.
Gin and tonics are the ultimate WASP drink and so simple to make.
I do love brandy. Mojitoes are my favorite summer drink, but sidecars are my favorite winter one.
I had something called an Old Bostonian which I loved. I can't find the recipe, but it's similar to what this site calls the Boston Cocktail.
I don't get why this story has gotten such play. When it cones to booze, all I really care about is "does it taste good? And if so, how do I get more of it?".
And seconding the recommendations for ryes and Islay scotches if you want brown liquor that's not sweet. (One of my friends described a particularly peaty Islay -- maybe Lagavulin? -- as "like licking a fireplace".)
I use "like drinking from an ashtray".
I think of any whisk[e]y as sweet -- often with other flavors masking the sweetness, but not liking any of them because they're sweet seems coherent to me. Calling a whisk[e]y dry has an implicit "within the plausible spectrum of what this kind of liquor is going to taste like".
I'm moving off my general opposition to scotch. Somehow I started drinking very large, very weak scotch and sodas -- so, a normal drink in terms of how much scotch, but in a larger glass with more soda -- and in hot weather, those are nice. But not something you'd do with scotch if you actually cared much for it.
33, 34: The metaphor that occurs to me is "like chewing a charcoal briquette."
I think it's Lapsang Souchong that has a lot of taste overlap with scotch with me, which made scotch a little more pleasant. A well-liked neighbor died last summer and she always drank Dewar's, so there often seem to be toasts in her memory being made and Lee has bought a bottle. (Selah's post-adoption middle name will be in part a tribute to her, so I've done my part and don't have to drink the Dewar's, which I like a bit but not quite enough.)
Also, where is M/tch with his recommendation of scotch and milk?
Most of my sugar consumption comes from bourbon, so I don't mind the sweetness. Hooker House Rye, which I have a bottle of, is an example of a very sweet but very good rye.
I don't think it makes that much sense to talk about the taste of "scotch" per se; Dewars is pretty vastly different from Macallan is pretty vastly different from Lagavulin and so on. I mean, I guess you could not be into even a hint of smokiness, and therefore be generally opposed to scotch, but there's a hell of a lot of variety once you've climbed smoky mountain, as it were.
Also I feel like the US interest in single malts (many of which are very good, don't get me wrong) has sadly killed off the joy of the blended scotch. Sometimes you just want to drink a J+B "scotch rocks" like it's 1978, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I don't get why this story has gotten such play. When it cones to booze, all I really care about is "does it taste good?
People get very precious about whisky, and for that matter about booze in general. I mean, I'm quite a beer snob myself, but there's a whole other level of authenticity-fetishism that I can't be doing with. In Europe a lot of it is about the Reinhneitsgebot, or in wine it gets extremely woo-y with biodynamics and the like.
33: I think that's a minority approach to consumption. People also want their consumption choices to express their refinement and good taste. Hence the horrors of the IPA Years, where you were an ignorant savage if you preferred beer with less than maximum hops.
re: 40
Actually, the last two bottles of Scotch I've bought have been blends: Hankey Bannister, and Johnny Walker Black. Drunk in exactly that way. In a chunky tumbler with ice. I can't remember the last time I bought a bottle of single malt. Quite a few years, I think, although I've drunk them lots [in a single glass measures] in pubs or at friends' houses.
Dewars is the correct scotch for Rusty Nails, certainly.
Somebody (who comments here, even) brought us a bottle of blended bourbon made up of excess barrels from defunct and/or contract distilleries in Kentucky (as described semi-dismissively in the OP article) that is really goddamned good.
I genuinely don't think I've ever tried rye. It's like after a certain age, people quit egging you on to try liquor and just let you order in peace, and so I generally get something I already know I like.
My favorite glass for hard liquor is a small jam jar with a poorly-silkscreened image of Tom and Jerry on it. I also enjoy Tia Maria Mole jars, though actually I do better with mole from scratch, so these are breaking faster than new ones come in. How important is the thinness and shape of your drinking glasses to all y'all?
I'm with heebster in not liking sweet whiskey, and with Benquo on Bulleit rye.
No ice for me, basically ever.
I was in Chicago not long ago and went with an older collaborator and my girlfriend to The Violet Hour, and we were all pretty disappointed with our drinks. Is the place in decline, or were we just unlucky or bad at ordering? My older collaborator's drink was made from scotch, lemon, orgeat and some kind of bitters but came out tasting pretty much indistinguishable from lemonade.
I also enjoy Tia Maria Mole jars, though actually I do better with mole from scratch
I take it this means something different over there. Over here, Tia Maria is a liqueur that nobody drinks but is a cultural touchstone of the 80s because of their adverts.
My drink these days is gin + Lemon, Lime, and Bitters.
Tia Maria means nothing over here, not a liqueur and not a brand of molé.
Doña María, on the other hand...
33: I think it's not knowing the sort of details that are mentioned in 20 about who does what, plus annoyance at being vaguely deceived by all the marketing ("small batch", etc.), and the sense that there might be a cheaper bottle that is, in fact, exactly the same thing.
Also, 26 doesn't match how I read things. I didn't get the sense that MGP is just a distillery that will distill your mash/ferment; rather, they have a few stock recipes that they manufacture from top to bottom, which the purchaser selects from a list and then finishes or directly bottles.
Also, not long ago I was on a kick drinking cheap white wine over ice. The ice makes it super cold, which helps taste, and adds hydration, which helps prevent hangover. I got the idea from how Bill Murray drinks champagne.
I know Tia Maria as the coffee liqueur that isn't Kahlua, but I don't think I've ever had any or seen it drunk. (We have a bottle of coffee flavored tequila that someone gave us once, and I think we may never open it. I cannot imagine the evening that would involve the thought "You know what we need now? Coffee-flavored tequila." Or, when I do imagine an evening like that, it sounds like an evening when things are going terribly, frighteningly, wrong.)
33, "I don't get why this story has gotten such play. "
the people who market this stuff have spent a lot of effort into creating romantic visions of artisans carefully and patiently crafting their ideal whiskey, and that by buying it, you get to share in that vision.
learning that some of this stuff comes out of the ass-end of a giant anonymous factory with no more craft to it than a box of McNuggets (as delicious as McNuggets might be) obliterates that vision.
52: That's basically the same thing I'm doing with scotch and soda's.
Lemon, Lime, and Bitters.
This reminds me that I need to get more bitter lemon soda statim.
I'm stabbing myself repeatedly with a letter opener for that apostrophe.
I like scotch too, but a lot of the smokypeaty stuff is just too much ashcan, so I go with what's cheap at Trader Joe's, which is Glenlivet. I would drink Dalwhinnie if I could afford it, but I mostly sip the scotch in the evening while playing the cello (faithful to a 19-year-old's vision of what grownups do), and I just decided to buy my rental cello so that I'm only responsible to myself when I spill scotch on it. That costs a lot of bottles, turns out.
faithful to a 19-year-old's vision of what grownups do
If more people had this fidelity, I think the world would be a more interesting place.
lk does this in a smoking jacket, I assume.
I've been drinking gin and tonics most recently, because WASP, duh (I was parenthetically fascinated whilst in England by the cheap canned gin and tonics that seem to fill some kind of a cheap-way-to-get-shitty-drunk-on-a-train role) but I also enjoy rye, lemon, black walnut bitters and a little water over ice as something between a cocktail and just a glass of liquor.
Are all smoking jackets maroon velvet, or just the ones in my head?
Anyway, nice of you to have the booze thread while I am temporarily on the wagon. Not because I am a drunk, but because I am fat.
Maybe I should start smoking cigarettes again. Then I can drink without the guilt.
I noticed earlier this summer that I much prefer straight gin over ice to a gin and tonic. Then I figured that this taste has to be on the list of "top 5 signs you may be an alcoholic" and decided to stop drinking during the week except at parties.
Black walnut bitters, huh. That sounds nice. I made some cod nocino one year and it was v. enjoyable.
I noticed earlier this summer that I much prefer straight gin over ice to a gin and tonic.
There is precisely one (1) kind of gin that I have identified that I like neat, but I like it that way a great deal.
some of the drier ones, like Paul
Giraud Cognac or Old Overholt or Bulleit Rye
My grandfather (who lived to age 91) was a big fan of Old Overholt as a cure for the common cold. Like Granny's tonic in The Beverly Hillbillies: "Take one glass every evening and stay in bed for ten days. Your cold will be gone."
There was an article in some local magazine about the Trappist monks in western MA who've decided to start brewing beer. They had tried different forms of farming with little success, and their jam business wasn't quite enough to support them anymore.
Initially, there plan was to follow the model of craft brewers in the US, but instead they followed the advice if Trappist brewers in Europe: make one good beer that you enjoy drinking and invest the capital in a state of the art brewing facility. Not exactly craft, and only a few of the monks work there, because a lot of them are old. But it's a tasty beer nonetheless.
Your favorite drink, OP, is more or less a gin gin mule, of which I love the name. And the drink, though it isn't my very favorite.
What is it you all have against sweet drinks? (He said, taking a drag off his very dry Brandy Alexander.)
in a smoking jacket
I would if I had one! Does anybody out there have a good one?
I think people have a vague, general sense that sweet anything is low-quality and appeals to a juvenile taste, so if you want to praise something that is sweet, you deny the sweetness. It's not that people don't actually like sweet drinks, they just don't want to call them that.
65: I can't find my previous comment relating this story, but anyhow the WASPiest party I ever attended (70th birthday party for the father of a friend of my mom's at their family's large-ish estate on the cape) the friends of the birthday boy started with very dry martinis but eventually moved to just straight gin, as none of the martinis were sufficiently dry.
Any martini love, gin guzzlers? Surely the point of a good martini is to take just enough edge off the neat-gin taste so that you can thoroughly enjoy the depraved neat-gin rush and end up sooner in Gin Lane.
I've had a Grasshopper once in my life, and really liked it. I keep on meaning to order one instead of dessert after a nice meal sometime, but never remember in the moment.
Any martini love, gin guzzlers? Surely the point of a good martini is to take just enough edge off the neat-gin taste so that you can thoroughly enjoy the depraved neat-gin rush and end up sooner in Gin Lane.
If I recall Travis McGee's signature drink as described in the books, it was pour some sherry over a glass of ice cubes, dump out the sherry, and fill the glass with gin and a twist of lemon peel. I believe the name of the drink was "Because drinking it out of the bottle looks bad."
I guess the exception to the pooh-poohing of sweet drinks is things that are explicitly considered dessert drinks, like … well, like Brandy Alexanders, AIUI.
I feel somewhat sheepish about my enjoyment of the whole sambuca-with-coffee-beans-and-set-on-fire thing, tbh.
75: what I like in a martini is the vermouth.
A drop of bitters is really good too.
67: I knew that was going to be what was behind the link before I even hovered over it.
71: Oh hey, one of the public defenders in the documentary about public defenders I watched last week was named Brandy Alexander and I was going to make a joke about the uncomfortable amount of overlap the whole thing would have with your life but it felt too mean. Perhaps I was wrong!
I think people have a vague, general sense that sweet anything is low-quality and appeals to a juvenile and feminine taste
There's a hell of a lot of sexism wrapped up in drink choices.
79: Sambuca is fun! Though the preferred method at my undergrad alma mater (which is nosflow's grad alma mater) was to set the vapors on fire while the sambuca was already in one's open mouth. Maybe should have gone in the dirtbag thread, but the blue flames weren't actually that hot.
I am occasionally sort of embarrassed that my preferred drinks are so heteronormative, but what can I do? I don't have a sweet tooth.
I was always kind of impressed by my college roommate who would always order the sweetest pinkest drinks available with no hint of embarrassment.
85, 86: Mmm. Generally, in bars, I drink either Irish straight or Manhattans, and I sometimes worry that I'm doing the former out of some misguided desire not to look girly (I don't have a good sense of whether Manhattans come across as girly or the reverse). On the other hand, I like Irish straight.
I also like fruity-tasting sweet drinks, but I have a tendency to drink them at an even higher rate than I'd drink anything else ("Oh, that was tasty. I'll have another. Or maybe it'd be more practical to order two rather than having to keep going up to the bar."), which makes them ill-advised. I'm really a lousy drinker.
My friend in LA that I used to drink with a lot (TAIX, hey!) is a pretty dude's dude kind of guy -- trained BJJ pretty seriously with some big names, into fixing up sports cars, etc. -- but he fucking loved Cosmopolitans, and would order basically nothing else. It was great. Even at, like, breakfast.
65: I had the same preference, and I think part of it is that it can be hard to taste the gin over the tonic. Then I discovered Green Hat, which has a pleasant and extremely distinctive flavor that stands up to just about anything.
I wouldn't drink it in a Martini, but in just about anything else it's great.
88: My claim to fame is always ordering the drink with "lady" in the name!
84: Gideon's Army? I guess I should watch that.
I don't have a good sense of whether Manhattans come across as girly or the reverse
IME, brown liquor in general is coded masculine. (Maybe an Old Fashioned would be the counter-example, although the cocktail nerds have reclaimed those recently.) Your Cosmopolitans, your Lemon Drops, your Midori Sours, those are your girly drinks.
We just got a new blender that crushes ice properly. Maybe I'll make ridiculous drinks this weekend. Frozen strawberry daquiris?
94: It depends on whether they muddle a fucking cherry. If not, anyone may drink one.
Weren't White Russians pretty girly before they were coded The Dude?
The Fancy Free is kind of sweet if you don't have a very restrained hand with the maraschino. I like 'em, though.
97: same friend loves White Russians, too.
Old Fashioneds are coded less masculine than Manhattans? I guess my genderometer is miscalibrated.
93.2: Yes, that one. And you of all people really don't have to.
94 is true but come on, Cosmos and Midori Sours and Lemon Drops are just objectively horrible.
Old Fashioneds are coded less masculine than Manhattans?
The followup about the cocktail nerds is necessary context here; it used to be the case (and probably still is in many places but not those that --->I<--- frequent, or at least, that I would get an Old Fashioned at) that yer standard Old Fashioned was festooned with various muddled and un-muddled fruits and topped with soda or sprite or something like that. The old-fashioned Old Fashioned that's come back into vogue, which has at most a muddled orange peel, is probably also coded fairly masculine.
I recall in 2004 or thereabouts reading about someone who made a practice of going to unfamiliar bars, when he travelled, and ordering Old Fashioneds as the first (or possibly second?) round of a kind of mini test of the bartenders, to see what he'd get, and possibly also instructing the failing ones as to how, in particular, they'd gone wrong. Probably on the eGullet cocktail forum? Or linked from there, or something.
It's like almost all chick flicks. Dismissed because of sexism? Yes. Still objectively terrible without application of sexism? Yes.
I feel like a lemon drop is basically not far removed in concept from a White Lady, and those are good.
A White Lady is basically a gin version of the Sidecar, which is also good.
105.2: I read that or something very like it recently. Wasn't on eGullet, but beyond that I have no idea where it might have been.
105: Yeah, my grandfather, who had a cinematic life as a casino big shot in the sixties, is an old-fashioned Old Fashioned drinker and could not be coded more masculine if he had the Mars symbol stamped on his forehead.
111: What's masculine about candy bars?
Ramos Gin Fizz: another good, overly sweet gin drink that codes femme.
I would not have thought that of the Ramos Gin Fizz though it's possible I was confusing it with the Pisco Sour somehow.
All the drinks with Lady in the name that I have had have been delicious.
Ramos Gin Fizz is so yummy and definitely so girly.
I have discovered that I like almost all cocktails and spirits, except, of course, my husband's beloved Scotch. I am working on developing my knowledge as that often leads to an interest for me, and am busy planning a trip that will hit up more than a few distilleries, but I find it amusing that the one thing I really wished I naturally liked I don't. Then again, I used to hate gin and now there are some days that I would sell the soul of my first-born for it. Like wolfson, though, there is only one gin that I've had that I would sip, and it was a strangely floral & fruity one (almost raspberry?) that I've forgotten the name of.
On the subject of sweet drinks, holy god, do I love me some damson gin. We made it last year for Christmas and I almost cried when we ran out. Double batch this year!
I also really like the sweet, non-craft-cocktail style of Old Fashioned's. I'm banned, I know.
The one year when I had a humongous bounty of sour cherries I made a sour cherry liqueur that was tasty.
Oh, nosflow, I screwed up in 118. Please change if you'd like.
a pretty dude's dude kind of guy
Use hyphens! I first read this as "a pretty-dude's dude kind of guy" and thought it was an affected way to describe him as gay.
That parsing doesn't make much sense to me.
Me... either? I'm glad urple, nosflow and I agree urple is being weird.
"a pretty-dude's dude kind of guy"
A dude who is not, himself, pretty, but is the dude of a dude who is.
The pretty dude is gay, because gay men are pretty. His "dude," i.e., lover, is perforce also gay. Thus, the kind of guy the pretty dude's lover prefers (i.e., "his kind of guy") is likely to be gay. #urplesplain.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
But that would be something like "pretty-dude's dude's kind of guy"? Or something?
126/127 were my parsing. 124 was acknowledging that's a pretty unusual way to say "gay".
126 posits only two dudes or guys, while 127 posits three. It looks like the moment's trend in #urplephilology is to assume 126, with the second "dude" being used attributively to modify the kind of guy.
I just don't see how "dude kind of guy" is supposed to be working in these constructions.
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Confidential to Josh: I went to the halal market and got a bunch of lamb last weekend and despite the fact that the spice rub I used when cooking it made no cultural sense it came out fantastic. Highly recommended.
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Even if 'pretty-dude' were a reasonable way of saying 'gay', wouldn't 'pretty-dude's dude' be more likely to be "a man who is appealing to 'pretty-dudes'" rather a man who necessarily is gay himself? (The word 'pretty' just stopped functioning. I hate when that happens.) A 'man's man' isn't a man who is involved with a particular other man, it's a man who men admire.
133: Try it as "a man's man kind of guy". It's awkward and ungrammatical, but I think comprehensible -- "What kind of guy is he? He's a man's man -- that's the kind of guy he is." Now substitute in "pretty-dude's dude" and you're off to Urpleland.
Oh, I see. Not "(pretty-dude's) (dude kind of guy)", but "(pretty-dude's dude) kind of guy". That's extremely obtuse.
137 crossed with 136. It sure is too bad that no hyphen was included to block this incredibly tortured interpretation.
Even if 'pretty-dude' were a reasonable way of saying 'gay', wouldn't 'pretty-dude's dude' be more likely to be "a man who is appealing to 'pretty-dudes'" rather a man who necessarily is gay himself?
I would think that the "man of a gay man" would himself be gay, generally.
138: yes, my point was that a hyphen could have avoided this confusion.
139 -- many pretty gay men have straight gimps in their possession, I'm told. #slander
This thread must be what people mean when they talk about bi invisibility.
Related to drinks but not drink drinks, I just this second realized that the reason my heart was pounding and I thought I was having a panic attack yesterday afternoon and then my hands were shaking like crazy today is that I've been drinking tea non-stop both mornings and not eating. Hmm.
Will no one speak for the non-pretty gay men out there? And, I suppose, for the pretty straight men out there, whether straight men who are pretty, or men of whatever appearance who are pretty straight?
140: Urple, we've known you for long enough to know that mere punctuation is powerless to stop you.
"Is it OK to have sex with this gimp that's been sitting in my basement for three years? He just smells a little bit off, nothing terrible."
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, but the dude of my pretty dude is Mandom!
134 is useless without telling me what kind of spice rub! But I'm sitting right across the street from that place right now. I should go in some time.
I can't remember what precisely was in it (as I said it was culturally senseless). It definitely included all of the following:
- a bit of star anise
- sichuan pepper
- coriander
- black pepper
- salt
- ajwain (in a jar labelled "cumin")
- a single sphere of allspice for some reason
and maybe that was it, but I'm not sure. Anyway, the point isn't that this particular mixture had good results, but that the general principle is sound.
Re: 147
I recommend berbere.
http://www.marcussamuelsson.com/recipe/berbere-spice-blend-recipe
(We buy a premixed one, though.)
To 142.2, oh, I also took a migraine medicine with caffeine in it this morning. That explains a lot. Perhaps I will learn my lesson.
Urple clearly didn't have one of those "I'm Not Gay But My Boyfriend Is" t-shirts in the 90s.
I think Humphrey Bogart orders Lizabeth Scott a Ramos gin fizz in Dead Reckoning but she's sort of a butch number with that voice, so I guess that doesn't answer the girliness question.
I made chili with berebere a time or two. It was swell.
Maybe it was just the presence of egg whites that made me think that the RGF isn't "girly", possibly because of some real or imagined experience of more women than men being put off by the idea of drinking booze with egg whites, even though it's great.
Surely a valet. A butler would be a household's dude.
Speaking of which, I needed to hire a nanny recently, and one of the agencies I looked at also advertises that they can help you hire a butler. Has anyone here actually seen a butler IRL? I've done OK in meeting rich people in my lifetime, but I have never ever ever seen a real butler.
I guess I've known people with "personal managers" who fill some of the roles that whatshisname the butler on Downton Abbey fills, namely managing household staff, but also do a lot of other things. But they'd never think of themselves as a butler.
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OT, but since this is an active thread I guess I'll ask here. I seem to recall that one of the classic pulp detective novelists had some writing advice along the lines of "If the story slows down, just have a couple of thugs with guns break through the door." Does anyone know who said this and what the exact quote is?
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140: The best thing about this comment is that there's no way for a hyphen to have forestalled the confusion. If Sifu had hyphenated 'pretty-dude' that would have either compelled your interpretation or indicated that he was having a stroke, but there's nothing to hyphenate that would have made what he actually did mean unambiguous. "Pretty dude's-dude" doesn't work at all.
160: I figured it might be Raymond Chandler and googled it and got lots of indirect references to it but no direct quotes.
Now I kind of want to make Ramos Gins Fizz for my birthday but they require endless shaking and also are something you'd only want one of.
Possibly multiply pwned because I skipped straight from 53 to the comment box: holy shit you are missing out. We have a friend who's a tequila enthusiast and who has parceled out tiny tastes of her precious bottle of coffee-flavored tequila, nearly impossible to find outside of Mexico. (IIRC there's something complicated about the brewing process that makes it sound much less sketchy than that description does.) The first time she offered I said, enh, pretty sure I can give that one a miss. SO WRONG. It is amazing stuff.
Really? We actually use the bottle as a doorstop right now. Like, just drink it straight as a liqueur?
My eccentric housekeeping decisions, let me show them to you. Look, it's a very stably shaped bottle, and that door needs something to keep it open, and five years or so ago it was right there and the problem hasn't needed to be revisited since.
For Scotch, I drink Lagavulin. I used to drink Talisker, but I don't anymore because Dilsia used to drink it with me, and it unavoidably reminds me of the taste of her lips.
165: Have you ever had really good tequila, or is all your experience with Cuervo and maybe Cuervo Gold? The high-end stuff is almost a different spirit entirely.
it's a very stably shaped bottle
Despite the urban legend, glass doesn't actually flow.
Did you ever weasel your way into finding out the provenance of her pregnancy?
Chandler also said, "A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow." I can't say I agree with him, though I have enjoyed the Chandler gimlet now and then on a hot afternoon.
I know exactly how I could have forestalled urple's (unjustified, frankly) confusion but I'm not telling.
there's something complicated about the brewing process that makes it sound much less sketchy than that description does
If you want to make coffee-flavored tequila sound sketchy, I have just the man for the job.
"Pretty dude's-dude" doesn't work at all.
Now it is you who is smorking the carck, LB. That works fine.
Oh, and it's from the introduction to Trouble is my Business.
"Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand."
Oh, I haven't had a gimlet in forever. That was my high school 'trying to look sophisticated' drink; pale green and kind of poisonous looking. I used to bring the makings to parties.
I went to the halal market and got a bunch of lamb last weekend and despite the fact that the spice rub I used when cooking it made no cultural sense it came out fantastic.
I highly recommend the spice/herb mix that Ottolenghi uses for his shwarma (I can never remember how to spell this) in Jerusalem. So wonderful.
165: yep. Though I suppose it's possible that more than one label produces the stuff, in which case your bottle might have been fulfilling its calling nobly all along. Let me check with my friend and find out what the known good label is.
When I decided to be a cocktail dork I adopted without much reflection the position that a true gimlet had to be made with Rose's and if you used fresh lime juice out of some reflexive urge to freshen things up you were doing it wrong. It is true that the weird funkiness of Rose's is not unpleasant!
A place I like here makes basil gimlets. Extra green.
Follow-up to 179: the stuff we've had is Tekali.
Tell me more of basil gimlets or of this place.
Room 389. I'm fond of the place but don't go much because half the time it's crowded and quite loud. It's fun to go on a weekday afternoon and have lots of large, strong drinks when you're unemployed. That I can tell you.
Oh but you wanted to know of the gimlets, not the place. They're just gimlets, but with basil. I'm not sure there's anything else to tell.
I always comment twice in a row and then feel self-conscious about it. I mean not very self-conscious.
I wanted to know of the gimlets or of the place. I feel perfectly answered.
I'm satisfied that I have given you a good thorough answering. (This is starting to feel like the noscase slash the crowds were clamoring for. Very quietly clamoring.)
They know that if they clamor too loudly or intemperately they will get nothing, nothing!
Huh, according to the Park Hyatt ad in the new New Yorker you can take a "bitters-making master class" after your Japanese matcha tea and private tour of MOMA. I think this means bitters have officially jumped the shark.
I have to host a birthday party Sunday and like gin and have plenty of basil growing, so I appreciate this suggestion, if not in a slashy way.
I'll ask here. I seem to recall that one of the classic pulp detective novelists had some writing advice along the lines of "If the story slows down, just have a couple of thugs with guns break through the door." Does anyone know who said this and what the exact quote is?
I don't know, but that advice is quoted in Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads.
Wait, what exactly is cyberpunk about "Army of Darkness"?
177: Hey! I don't think it's been "forever" quite yet.
Wait, what exactly is cyberpunk about "Army of Darkness"?
Good question.
Of course the list of things in Cyberpunk 2020 (only 6 years away!) for which it doesn't pay to think too hard about them is long enough that one extra element doesn't make much difference.
194: You're right, that was an excellent gimlet you made me (those were? I admit I was losing track of the number of drinks by the end of the evening). I went home thinking I should stock up on some Rose's, and then forgot again.
You could just use fresh limes & sugar like I did.
Achievement Unlocked: Fishing for Compliments
171 -
As a cocktail nerd, this is a problem I can solve!
I always thought Chandler was being insane because, seriously, equal parts in and Rose's tastes a bit like poison, and certainly not sophisticated and delicious. And that's the recipe that shows up over and over again in old cocktail books - it's universal before you get to the turn of the century or so. After that you start to see things like 2:1 Gin to Rose's, which tastes a bit less like, well, straight Rose's.
It turns out that the explanation is that at some point Rose's changed what they were doing and started selling double strength cordial instead of their original mix. The Rose's we can buy now is actually double strength Rose's original lime cordial.
You'd assume that this means to just use 2:1 - but it doesn't! Water is really, really crucial to the way cocktails work*, and that missing part of water has a really important effect on the drink. If you try mixing 1 part Water, 1 part Rose's, and 2 parts gin you'll actually get something really pleasant.
Also people who mix fresh lime juice, sugar and gin and call it a gimlet are being ridiculous: that is already a drink that exists (gin sour!). You might as well mix gin and vermouth and call it a Manhattan.
*This is why people who keep their gin in the freezer instead of just adding ice to it end up with terrible martinis. Stronger ones, yes a little, but terrible ones.
Oh, gosh, the wikipedia entry is hilarious.
I shouldn't mock, but look at the list of classes:
Role: "Description" [Special Ability]
Cop: "Maximum lawmen on mean 21st century streets" [Authority]
Corporate: "Slick business raiders and multi-millionaires" [Resources]
Fixer: "Deal makers, smugglers, organizers, and information brokers" [Streetdeal]
Media: "Newsmen and reporters who go to the wall for the truth" [Credibility]
Netrunner: "Cybernetic computer hackers" [Interface]
Nomad: "Road warriors and gypsies who roam the highways" [Family]
Rockerboy: "Rebel rockers who use music and revolt to fight authority" [Charismatic Leadership]
Solo: "Hired assassins, bodyguards, killers, soldiers" [Combat Sense]
Techie: "Renegade mechanics." [Jury Rig]
Med-Tech: "Street doctors" [Med-Tech]
198: Oh. Wow! I've wondered about that for ages. Must try. And yeah, a waterless martini sure is gross.
Mild dissent on waterless martini. Less gross than over-shaken, very watery martini, though probably yeah the martini middle path is best. (Hopefully now you are picturing a fabulous, sophisticated Buddha.) I kept my gin in the freezer for a while.
My pretentious teenage drink was a Tom Collins. I still do like them though.
Bhikku Smearcase is of course correct. The eightfold path: right gin, right vermouth, right ice, right temperature, right shaker, right garnish, right glassware, right table companions.
Since we moved to a place with a lemon tree in the back I've switched to using a lemon twist as garnish and gotten very pleasantly used to it.
I should qualify that by noting that drinks history is... unreliable. It's usually about 2/3rds gossip and 1/3 things people kind of remember (but they were pretty drunk at the time). So the bit about Rose's changing strength could be way off. And gin used to be a lot higher in proof, at least in the Navy which was where the drink would have come from. It doesn't matter too much though because adding the water makes it a lot better without getting rid of the marmalade-y flavor you get with cooked citrus.
Also the waterless martini is ok, I guess, if you're drinking what people call a very dry martini (which means: straight gin, or close enough that it doesn't matter). But if you're actually mixing one with an appreciable amount of vermouth, like you ought to be it really does need the water to make everything work together, and it's better to err on the side of a bit too much water than a bit too little.
I hate martini glasses so much that I consider the drink ruint.
198.non-footnote-last is a nice counterpoint to 197.
When I remember to, I do ask for a tumbler. I would never own one of those shitty spill-maximizing glasses myself.
(Oh sure, just slurp your martini down an inch so that you don't spill. Nothing grating about that noise at all.)
170: Random guy she met on a business trip to Dubai, or so she says. The baby looks pretty white, so I assume he was European.
Let's hope she didn't put a baby in white face.
205 - Things where people have elderly bottles of liqueur or bitters and are painstakingly trying to recreate the flavor profile and arguing with each other about who got it wrong are the best. People were trying to duplicate Kina Lillet for years with homebrew recipes (I think most craft cocktail places use Cocchi Americano now that it's reasonably widely available). You could have a theme party with reproduction Abbott's bitters cocktails, various people's attempts at making Damascus steel, and a string quartet that use historical tunings.
Hopefully they wouldn't be making the Damascus steel right there in the party.
(The quartet of course would be playing on old-style strings.)
What else?
Wooden bowls and serving implements made by Robin Wood?
re: 214.2
I keep meaning to get hold of some Aquila classical guitar strings, which use a sort of artificial gut. I don't think they do actual gut for modern scale length guitar, just some smaller instruments, lutes and so on.
They are bloody expensive, though. Has anyone tried them or similar?
Catching up on this thread, these two from Thorn are weirdly specific and also (often) apply to me:
I think it's Lapsang Souchong that has a lot of taste overlap with scotch with me
I just this second realized that the reason my heart was pounding and I thought I was having a panic attack yesterday afternoon and then my hands were shaking like crazy today is that I've been drinking tea non-stop both mornings and not eating
The parsing subthread was hilarious.
219: Related to the second, I'm still awake, but The Teo & Smearcase Show doesn't seem to be on yet. At least I'm getting some sewing done, which may make you feel sufficiently different from me.
Aaaaaand lurid is winding down the bedtime stories and it's almost scotch o clock, thank Christ.
218: Are you thinking of a gin fizz? Because I am, now.
220: sadly, that's a skill I haven't acquired (I have been trying to convince myself that I should learn to knit in the fall, though). I am drinking a clear liquor now (mostly due to this thread), but for conservation of masculinity I'm playing a video game where you pretend to drive trucks.
I definitely like rye more than bourbon, and scotch more than either. Old Overholt is great and heebie should definitely try it. That said, I'm actually drinking Four Roses right now, inspired by urple's mention of it in his crazy drunken comment recently. It's okay, but definitely reminds me why I don't really like bourbon.
Also, I had sort of assumed the stuff in the OP was common knowledge, but I guess not.
Four Roses is way too sweet for me, but try some of the Willett special bottlings before giving up on Bourbon.
I doubt my local liquor store carries any of those, but I haven't given up on bourbon entirely. Weller's is great, and I haven't tried any other wheated bourbons but I may well like them too.
But how do you two feel about libertarian hair?
I don't really care much about martinis (though I did have a very nice one at some bar in Brooklyn once, lemme tell you all about it) but I like 204.1.
How does libertarian hair come into it?
Ah yes. I thought I had overlooked something in this thread. My mind is disordered by a mixture of beer, outrage, and satisfaction.
Why satisfaction, you might oblige me by asking.
I'll give you all a chance to do so. Not everyone at once, please.
Sounds like what you need is some whiskey.
I am satisfied because also attending the reading was a woman whom I met at a party on Saturday—whom, in fact, I had previously met many years ago, but had mostly forgotten about—and who is both (as I learned on Saturday but had not previously known) really interesting and (as I knew from the first) far from unattractive, and before and after the reading discussed in a different post, and in the break between the "sets", had a very enjoyable conversation her, so that, we both agreed, the evening, which would otherwise have been a dreadful waste of time, was in fact nice.
If I were going to continue to dull my senses with alcohol I would probably open one of the eaux de vie I bought a few weeks ago.
Oh, that sounds like fun! Though I'm a little jealous how far your personal bar for "a dreadful waste of time" is from mine.
Well, I suppose that if I had been there on my own, I would have amused myself by "tweeting" or commenting here or on the other place.
I'm bowing out for the evening now but I hope the teo & Thorn show is a success.
243: And that would not have been a dreadful waste of time?
245 or some version thereof is the teo & Thorn Show's mouseover text.
I don't think TV shows generally have mouseover text, actually.
Fine, the teo & Thorn & Standpipe's Blog Show.
Can I play, too? I'm not on my normal coast.
The teo & Thorn show featuring Standpipe's Blog.
250: Absolutely. Featuring special guest ydnew!
ydnew! I don't even have a coast, though riverbanks certainly have their charms.
Oh, great. They've changed the name and are messing with the regular cast. This show is on the verge of jumping the shark.
You just wait until Poochie shows up.
(We're expecting that to be next week some time.)
Oh, come on, I'll gladly rep knitting, cats, and Kaintuck. What better Smearcase equivalent can the blog offer?
Poochie's returning from his home planet? I didn't think that Kickstarter campaign would work!
Yes, Thorn is a perfectly adequate Smearcase-equivalent. She's even gay!
Poochie's returning from his home planet? I didn't think that Kickstarter campaign would work!
Well, it hasn't yet. But you can help! We're only a couple billion dollars short of our goal.
254: So, I'm not welcome? I mean, Thorn is a good stand-in and I'm dull, but it seems limiting to leave teo teamed with Smearcase in perpetuity.
I learned today that Pittsburg, CA once had a steel mill. My mother has been telling stories about "the mill" where she grew up. My father, who grew up in the same town, thought it was a confabulation. My aunt explained that Dad's family lived on the nicer side of town, but she and Mom grew up able to see it from their yard. And now it makes sense!
I also learned that paying slightly extra for a rental car might be worth it to avoid a Hyundai.
You're totally welcome here, ydnew. Ignore the haters.
I'm sure there's no problem with visiting guest stars, ydneww! I hadn't known your parents were from the same town. Was it a nosflow-like situation where they met and then met more meaningfully and substantially much later?
Finally, a comment about a different Pittsburg*. This show may still have some life in it.
Hey now, I'm pretty sure the t&S show has rarely if ever mentioned Pittsburgh.
As long as sole viewer fake accent is happy, we might still keep this thing afloat!
265: You have to take the blame for your larger network affiliation. It's the nature of tv criticism.
I dunno, I mean, all the Pittsbourgeois commenters tend to go to bed well before our show comes on.
Possibly in drunken stupors, but I won't go so far as to claim that as a fact.
263: They are high school sweethearts. They sat next to each other in band. Mom, a freshman, played oboe, and Dad, a sophomore, played the clarinet. Dad went to college for the first two years on the other side of the country, then transferred to be in the same place as Mom (and at a better school for physics). They wrote each other weekly letters for those two years and married as soon as Mom graduated. She was 21 and he was 22. It let to some, let's say, unreasonable expectations about my dating life. My sister married her first boyfriend, whom she met her first year of college, which was more in line with expectations.
Possibly in a french fry salad stupor. Pittsburgh is a pretty debauched place.
That's very sweet, ydnew. And I suspect you're better of being a happy post-dirtbag unmarried than you would be fitting their mold.
268: Not Pittsburghers? I was looking at what the correct appellation is and learned that Pittsburgh is considered the Paris of Appalachia.
Thorn, my first high school boyfriend married right out of high school. ("Just think, Mom says wistfully, "That could have been you.") I later heard through the grapevine that he'd joined the Army, been stationed in Korea, got a girl there pregnant, and divorced within two years. Just think, that could have been me!
(Thanks for giving me benefit of the doubt about being POST-dirtbag.)
Not Pittsburghers?
Sometimes I feel the need to stay true to my Quebecois heritage.
(I came to the dirtbag life late, so I cast no stones.)
I thought 268 was meant to specifically exclude Moby, who by now has gone to either the smoky bar or the unsmoky bar and is dreaming of non-bourgeois cob houses whether awake or asleep.
OK, I've managed to stay awake long enough that I won't wake up at 4 am. Good night, all.
I think Moby's bourgeois enough for Pittsburgh.
I think I'm going to bed, too. That way I should get three hours of sleep before Selah's next waking. Though I really can't complain as she's started asking to just be set in the crib at bedtime rather than wanting more elaborate ritual. I wish her big sisters would follow her lead.
Sorry, show! This is why no one wants Faux Smearcase.
It's okay. Hopefully the Brits will show up soon.
And where the hell is Real Smearcase? He's been totally unreliable ever since he got a job and stuff.
I know, right? The nerve of some people! Ugh, and this noise from upstairs is what I get for saying the baby won't be up for another three hours. Time to drop off a backup pacifier and then I think I can go to bed. And I didn't even complain about what a crummy job I'm doing with what I'm sewing and how I'm not sure if I can salvage it or should undo what I've done. (It's totally normal to use floaty Hawaiian-shirt material to make a sleeveless tunic, right?)
I'm hoping Selah will get herself back to sleep and I won't have to intervene, but she dropped a second pacifier so I guess I'm on duty. Oh well.
243: And that would not have been a dreadful waste of time?
"Heh." It would have helped the time pass, anyway.
283: Brit sighted in another thread!
287: Yes, it's odd that none have made it over here yet.
Maybe they're outraged by our spelling of "whiskey."
I'm drunk and in the wrong time zone, can I be part of the show?
But I'm mostly just sad about the Yazidi, so I don't think I'll make a great show.
That's okay, it's not a great show to start with.
But I'm drunk and out of whiskey (and also sad about the Yazidi) myself, so I'm about to go to bed.
160. Yes it was Chandler (Simple Art of Murder), but you've remembered it slightly wrong: "Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand."
||
I am trying to write something but have been almost dumbfounded by the discovery that Dawkins charges up to half a million dollars a year to disciples who wish to have lunch or breakfast with him. The lucky recipients are said to have access to the magic of reality.
So naturally I looked in here.
|>
295: Christ, what an asshole! The "magic of reality" thing makes it even yuckier.
279 is right. Also, I'm mostly just exhausted, not drunk. We moved our office and a guy gave notice. There is only an "I" in team as everybody else quit or left for break.
It's a really nice office. The carpet is a bit worn and it is smaller than my old office, but I have a floor to ceiling window with a view from the edge of campus to the forested hills of Lincoln-Lemington. Plus, I have means to control the temperature in my own office and I'm much closer to the central parts of campus.
217 -
Sours take either limes or lemons (or both if you're feeling indecisive), it doesn't really matter. They're basically just strong punches, served cocktail-style. And eggs are something that showed up later on in them - nice for some of them, but not required. (I haven't tried eggs in a tequila sour, but it doesn't sound promising.)
Well, it doesn't matter for whether it's a sour or not. It matters for the flavor. Gin sours with lime don't taste as good as ones with lemon, which is why you don't usually see them. But that's a variation in what works best with individual spirits not the type of drink involved.
Gin, brandy, whiskey other than scotch, pisco(but the difference isn't as big here) -> lemon.
Tequila, Rum, Scotch(inexplicably) -> lime.
Vodka -> no one cares, use sour mix.
After-hours unfogged is such a chill place. I'll have to come by next time I have insomnia.
295: Dawkins is an ass, and the surest way to part a fool from their money is to make thinking they're not a fool part of their identity. My kind is not the wisest. (Of course, if I could change half a million a year for disciples to listen to me blather, I'd do it in a heartbeat, no scruples.)
the surest way to part a fool from their money is to make thinking they're not a fool part of their identity
Quiet, fool! Did the future robots send you???
After-hours unfogged is such a chill place.
I think the mood lighting is kind of pretentious, to be honest.
Speaking of 295, if you select the "I will pay by check, give a donation of stock, or call in my credit card" option, I think you can pledge $100,000 in the name of anybody whose email address you happen to know. Just saying.
Kickstarter allowing me to quit job and make 5-7 comments nightly on unfogged, often about the fact that nobody else is commenting: who's in?!
306: How much do we have to donate to get to have a lunch with just you and your personal assistant?
295: Wow. That almost makes me want to join a fundamentalist church just to spite the bastard.
306: Let me ask my personal assistant. Let me hire a personal assistant. Oh, just buy me a burrito and we'll pretend there's a third person at the table.
