While beer, wine, and mead have been around since ancient times, it took a while longer for people to learn how to distill spirits. Even after learning how to distill spirits, there wasn’t much written or talked about punches/flips/cocktails until much later.
So let’s jump forward to our first era, the 17th through the early 19th century when spirits were commonly mixed into punches and flips. For the record, a punch was a mixture of alcoholic and non-alcoholic ingredients (usually fruit juices). Flips were similar but served warm, and shifted to include eggs (a modern evolution of a flip would be eggnog). The first American cocktail book known to have been published came out in the 1860’s. This began the codification of cocktails as the four components (spirit, sweet, water, bitter). The recipes published in there and ones developed by bartenders in regional bars that spread through word of mouth and traveler requests are the ones that are now known as the pre-prohibition cocktails.
When prohibition came into being in the US, most of the skilled bartenders left for foreign shores to ply their trade. While they were overseas, they did develop some cocktails that survived and were brought back after the dark times were over in the US (such as the Bloody Mary). Meanwhile, here in the US, with only poor quality spirits available, most cocktails that were being developed and gaining in popularity were those that masked the taste of these liquors of questionable origin. Thankfully, at some point America came to its senses about banning alcohol. When this happened, there were other issues going on. Eventually those troubles ceased, which meant a lot of men who were sent overseas came back to the US. As they came back, they brought back not only a Lust for Life, but an enjoyment of tropical flavors.
Of those two sailors who came back, the ones we are most interested in are Donn Beach and Victor Bergernon. They found a culture they appreciated and brought it back here to the US, and started Tiki culture (soon…). While this was going on, the classics were being brought back from pre-Prohibition times. While there were lots of issues during the mid-1900’s, cocktails were not one of them.
As things moved into the 1960’s and 1970’s, there were several disturbing trends that all lined up at the same time. There was a trend for modernization, which included pre-packaged ingredients being healthier than fresh ones, there was an embracing of vodka as a primary spirit, and there was a preference towards sweeter things. So there was a movement to packaged sour mix, bottled juices, and moving to easier to use ingredients (which isn’t always a bad thing). This isn’t to say that no lasting cocktails came from this time, but the overall trends were not positive.
Trends always come and go, and when the 90’s rolled around there was the gaining popularity of big band and swing music. With this, some interest in the classic cocktails returned as well. This led to the rise of the martini bar. Now, most of what they sold were not martinis, but cocktails that were served in a cocktail glass and just called an X Martini (Chocolate Martinis, Espresso Martinis, etc.).
With that, we get to modern times. We were living in a world with a wide array of ingredients that can be ordered online and shipped regardless of the time of year. There are piles of books being released on a regular basis that consist of cocktail recipes. Most cities will have several bars specializing in cocktails. New drinks are still being created and named, especially as some older spirits were being revived.
Here’s hoping that enough bars survive the lockdowns, and we can continue the upward trend we’ve been on for the past 30 years. Over the next couple of weeks, as the weather turns warm, and more places open up, it’s time for a celebration. This means that I’ll finally be writing up the piece on Tiki culture, and after that providing another use for your ice cream maker.
I need to think about drinking my backlog of booze.
I’ve got a similar problem. Drinking isn’t really good for weight loss, and I’ve been (good for the most part). But I’ve got a variety of really good bourbons downstairs that I need to work through.
0 carbs in bourbon right? you are good to go.
Yup. I had no trouble losing weight when I went Keto. I didn’t stop drinking liquor – 80 proof or higher.
Low carb hasn’t worked for me in the past. Only calorie counting has consistently worked for me.
I like First Law answers to life’s problems
Low carb is mostly just a way to limit calorie intake without counting them.
Ethanol is a carbohydrate
Disclaimer: I am not a chemist
I don’t think it is, and what I can find from Google seems to agree. There’s not enough oxygen in the molecule.
Carb or not, alcohol has calories
sugars — 4 calories per gram
fats — 9 calories per gram
alcohol — 7 calories per gram
Booze is not calorie free.
alcohol — 7 calories per gram – I am not convinced of this. if you burn it sure, how much the body gets i don’t know
https://www.cnn.com/2013/04/03/health/wine-waistline/index.html
And then there are the calories! Booze has 7 calories per gram, making it the second-most calorie-dense macronutrient. (That’s just below pure fat, which has 9 calories per gram.) This means a measly 1.5-ounce jigger of vodka has almost 100 calories.
You metabolize alcohol and reap the calories — all of them.
Pie is correct. It does not matter how many calories are in a given substance, only how many you can access. Cellulose for example is often used to warm my house but….
You metabolize alcohol and reap the calories — all of them. – again I have not seen clear evidence o that. maybe it is out there
https://drinks.seriouseats.com/2013/10/cocktail-science-do-alcohol-calories-count-digesting-spirits.html
More significant to the current discussion, the Wikipedia article explains that alcohol is almost never fully metabolized, but rather excreted as acetic acid (because it’s a toxin and we want to get rid of it, remember?). This implies that we are getting far less than the theoretical maximum of 7 calories/gram from alcohol.
However, the prevailing knowledge in health and nutrition circles seems to contradict this assessment: nutritionists are taught to assume that the energy stored in alcohol is almost 100% available to the body.
. . . .
Remember that the body wants to get rid of alcohol because it sees it as a toxin. One way to get rid of alcohol is to use it for energy. But, your liver can only process so much alcohol as energy before the body has to start dumping the excess as urine.
Basically, from a physiological standpoint, if you have one drink slowly, you’ll probably digest most of the alcohol as energy. Drink heavily, and the calories don’t “count” as much, because you’ll end up excreting them.
So, binge drinking is the answer.
i have seen “overfeeding” studies where the excess calories were food or booze and the food group added more fat than the booze group.
“Drink heavily, and the calories don’t “count” as much, because you’ll end up excreting them.
So, binge drinking is the answer.”
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– and to your mead-of-the-month subscription
To drink enough for that, you’re going to need a mead-of-the-minute club.
Maybe not in the dietary sense, but is hydrated carbon. CH3CH2OH. I’m guessing the definition requires a double bonded oxygen in there somewhere? It’s been too long since I took O-chem, so I’ll go with you on this.
the metabolism of ethanol definitely releases energy
Don’t carbs have a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen and oxygen?
You’re probably correct about that. It’s been a long time since I took o-chem.
0 carbs if you don’t count the conversion process. Ask a diabetic how not accounting for that works out.
[paging SugarFree]
I have a bottle of Four Roses I want to finish off before I move.
That and a giant Costco bottle of Vodka. Which I don’t touch. I hate moving booze.
#metoo
/looks around house
And reading my backlog of books, shooting a backlog of guns, getting done a backlog of house projects….
UCS, that’s what zooms are for.
11:13 here. Is that too early to start sipping?
Is it ever too early?
It’s always happy hour somewhere.
I am right now in a zoom metaxa tasting. not bad but not my thing. Angel’s treasure is in the over150$ range and yeah there are some many whiskies I like more for that scratch.
the brand ambassador guy did recommend the cheaper 5 star and 7 star metaxa to be used in cocktails or just with some tonic water
Living in Big College Town, the sheer number of inexperienced drinkers who think that vodka / _______ (OJ, cranberry juice, ginger beer, Red Bull, etc) is the epitome of a sophisticated cocktail is maddening at times.
The spirit does have a history, and a place behind the bar, though.
I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be used. I just lean towards something with flavor when I’m looking for a primary spirit. The trends and changes through time interest and entertain me. Look at gin, which started as the cheap drink for the lower class in England to being considered a classy and sophisticated spirit.
I understand, and agree.
Anecdotal: I went to a no-shit tiki bar in Orlando last weekend. Their signature cocktail (scroll about halfway down the page) is vodka-based, which shocked the hell out of me. I didn’t care, though, ’cause the drink was delicious.
I assume you’re talking about the interspecies erotica drink (have to keep the family friendly rating after all)?
I just reached out to the local tiki bar (Porco) to see if they’ve reopened or have a reopening date yet. I’ve yet to get there (it’s not in the best area to get to), but they don’t have any menu or drink list online to share.
That’s the one. It comes in a big-ass goblet, complete with a dehydrated lemon slice float, atop which is a flaming bitters-soaked sugar cube.
I followed that up with a tiki classic: the Jet Pilot. Life was good.
Just a heads up, you’ve doxxed yourself on the link.
He’s done that before – I assume he DGAF.
The Queen Mother subsisting entirely upon a diet of gin and swans does not render that English doppelganger of Dutch swill upmarket.
It takes the right environment to want a true cocktail. When I’m drinking for the buzz and don’t want to overpay or think too hard, which is the majority of the time, it’s really easy to go for the rum/coke or whiskey/7.
Oddly, when I’ve had true cocktails, it was when I set out to actually do just that. I’ve only ever had 1 real margarita. It was absolutely delicious and I’d never known until then how to actually make a real margarita. I’d always drank the sugary mixed shit and called it good. I wonder if that has more to do with shitty bartenders or American Consumerism.
It’s rare that I’ve found a bartender who actually knows how to make cocktails. When I order a long island, I have to specifically ask that they make a real long island ice tea. I don’t even know how people drink those crappy mix syrups.
I think I’d order a lot more cocktails if every place I’ve been to didn’t charge me $10 a drink and tried to sell me something it isn’t. There are a few good places, I don’t say bars for a reason, that I’ll go to because I know that the guy behind the bar is knowledgeable, doesn’t over pour and makes me feel like I’m paying him to be an actual bartender.
I love making my own margaritas from fresh limes. What a wonderful taste when the ingredients are fresh.
For the premix and poorly made cocktails, I’d say it’s a bit of both. Then there’s also the type of bar you’re in. If I walked into a sports bar during the game, and asked the bartender to make me a Satan’s Whiskers, I fully expect to be either told “No” or “Get the fuck out of here”. But if I’m in a bar that says they pride themselves on their cocktails, I shouldn’t be getting a fruit salad in my Old Fashioned (it’s my baseline drink to judge an establishment). The cocktail bars I really like, I’m going to be spending above $10 a drink, and will not be spending the full night there, and I will feel it’s money well spent.
Re “EO Joe” from the previous thread… There’s already a Captain EO.
https://imgur.com/gallery/DueVq
Needs a Biden face photoshopped onto it.
In local to me good news, two of the three good cocktail bars (Velvet Tango Room and Society Lounge) have either reopened or announced a reopening for next week.
Still waiting on the third one (Spotted Owl) to announce a reopening, and I suppose I should at least give the vegan cocktail bar (Cloak and Dagger) a shot at some point. Although I have to complain about the vegan place calling items meatloaf, pork rinds, and brisket
Yeah, I think there ought to be, not a law, but a social stigma against vegan recipes being named like recipes with meat. They can be good in their own right, so why do you need to make them sound/taste like the real thing? Come up with some original stuff–I don’t want to eat the culinary equivalent of a BS modern Hollywood reboot of an old movie that was actually good.
At the very least, the names should be modified. Think “loaf,” “rinds,” and, I don’t know, “bris?”
I don’t know, “bris?”
Assuming you’re getting a very small portion.
Finally! I was thinking no one was going to take a slice at that.
https://nypost.com/2021/04/01/walmart-customer-brawls-with-would-be-shoplifter-video-shows/
Another great reason to shop at Walmart!
Looks like racism.
It’s clearly the security guards fault.
Anyone else ever order the fishbowl drink and have the server ask if there are more people coming?
There was a bar in Tucson (Tiki Hut? Tiki something) that had a drink called the Scorpion Bowl. That was my lucky drink; if I shared it with a girl, sex was practically guaranteed. Granted this was college so it was kind of like fishing with dynamite but I’m not complaining.
I have, we each got scorpion bowl at the Star Trek bar in Vegas. Two straws just allow you to drink faster.
Silky O’Sullivan’s in Memphis used to have a drink called the Diver (“Guaranteed to make you go down”) that originally came in old metal paint cans (not sure there were ever really paint in there). They switched to plastic buckets after too many young sailors and Marines showed up at sick call at NAS Memphis on Monday with semi-circular cuts on their head from the metal paint cans being swung with abandon.
Great place to go when you were a kid. You could get in with a military ID even if you were 18 and the place had college gals from Memphis State there.
Booze.
https://archive.li/5XOhL
#5 is humorous.
Apropos.
I see some places I should be in that gallery.
A bunch of phoneys, liars, and charlatans. Everyone one of them.
Looks like a double masker in the wild helping Mayor Pete out at the beginning of the video.
Double masking? No no no, how about double gun, 50% more efficient, or how about triple gun 75% more effective.
He should have gone with a skateboard.
wearing a backwards cap
with a propeller on top
Wind powered!
Have mercy, that’s just sad.
It would have been funnier if he crashed and burned on that bike like that video of Beto on a skateboard allegedly. Or at least if he got his pants stuck in the chain.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-laptop-father-chased-him-drug-intervention
There were so many friends and family telling me how this was all BS and RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA… voted Biden. They are suddenly quite mum on the subject.
People are such assholes.
Meanwhile, in DC…
Looks like somebody took a wrong turn and whacked into it. If that’s what the radicals picked to storm the seat of power they’re not going to get very far.
Except he got out of the car with a knife supposedly.
He dead now.
Is he? I thought he was in custody.
Well, he can be both…
That update was per Twitter. I don’t know for sure.
gotcha
yup. he dead.
Now they’re reporting one of the cops he hit has died, also.
He should’ve done it in New York. The Mayor would have him a room at the Ritz Carlton in no time.
Ah, so suicide…
This was clearly a coup attempt.
Congress was in recess. What better time to take it over?
If you can just get in the building and claim it for yourself, you are in charge of the government.
sez so right there in the constitution!
Agreed. New rule.
False-front operation to justify the next six months of military occupation.
When I first heard about it, that’s exactly what I thought.
I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if that were true. Leftist control freaks are experts at false flags and have been caught so many times I lost count. Not only that but no idea, however ridiculous, is over the top for them.
I would. They don’t need false flags. They can whatever they like an the media will support it. Including keeping troops in dc indefinitely.
Better send another 10K National Guard.
Note: I’m hoping to get back to my semi-regular appearances in the GlibZoom soon, probably next week. We’re getting office furniture set up and computer hardware up and running this weekend.
It’s not a cocktail unless it has a little umbrella.
I’ve always loved the cocktail skewers shaped like swords because they fit perfectly into the hands of Star Wars/G.I. Joe/Fisher-Price Adventure People action figures.
The little cocktail swords do not work as weapons, at least according to the liner notes story in one of Me First and the Gimmie Gimmie’s album.
For you aviation geeks, I heard the jets go over my house for the Opening Day flyover of Fenway Park about an hour ago.
Great shot from on top of the Green Monster
KC-46 from Pease AFB, NH
F-15 from Barnes ANGB, MA
F-35 from Burlington ANGB, VT
And check the flight designation for the tanker (for you Red Sox fans).
The one thing I read, and experienced making the classic Gimlet as described in The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, is some of those early cocktails were tooth-achingly sweet.
I mean 1/2 Rose’s lime juice and half gin – phew! A splash of lime juice goes a long way.
Related: I bought a 4-pack of Lion Stout yesterday. Brewed in Sri Lanka – British colonialism!!!!!eleven1!!! – it is one of the better European type stouts I’ve had. And better than Founder’s Oatmeal stout.
The gimlet as described there is perfect for masking the flavor of bad gin (prohibition age recipe). Equal parts lime juice and simple syrup and balance that with gin to your tastes (3:3:4 is a decent starting point).
OFFS. Some lunatic ran his car into the cops at the capital? Then jumps out with a knife? Genius.
Let me be clear: If the entire city of Washington DC were nuked while every national politician were present and they all died and all of the symbolic buildings/monuments destroyed the country that we live in would keep humming right along. In fact it would probably do so better with all of those parasites gone.
Trying to pull off a coup by taking over any building in Washington is absurd.
He stabbed one of the cops too.
Justification for MOAR GUN KONTROL!!!
Cue the Democrat outrage in 3….2…….1
They’re running 23 & Me on the victims and perp to establish correct ethnicity for The Narrative®.
Asian Cop and White Wing Republican FTW!
“2%? Close enough! One drop rule!”
If you want to refresh the tree of liberty you have to go where the tyrants are.
Most of the time when crap like this happens the perpetrator is just unhappy because the wrong tyrant is in power. I dont think he was trying to refresh any tree of liberty. Thats where my initial guess is….either that or a false flag operation.
Or maybe it’s just a crazy person. In NYC they are commonly found tossing bricks or pushing people in front of subway trains. Maybe in DC it’s ramming participants in the military occupation.
The student council meeting?
Might help to go where there’s an actual living tree of liberty, not a dead desiccated husk.
I’m not sure The Bee is going to top this.
Those this is close.
Snopes rates as false.
Somebody else thought of it…
https://www.facebook.com/1557764303/posts/10224286521541511/?d=n
Just another day in Biden’s America.
If you can just get in the building and claim it for yourself, you are in charge of the government.
Capture the Flag.
If you can get to the Speaker’s podium, everybody has to do what you say.
*shudders*
I remember that.
/puts on a Zoot Suit
/realizes it doesn’t fit anymore
Huh… must have shrunk in the closet.
One of the best concerts I ever went to was the Brian Setzer Orchestra at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach
Great venue – saw Better Than Ezra there.
SCHIEßE
Shoot what?