Testing Whiskey With a Chip and a Laser
Identifying a good glass of whiskey requires attention to color, aroma and taste, and it takes some experience to learn. Spectroscopic tools can now automate this process, but most of them are complicated to use. Praveen Ashok of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland (where else?) have his colleagues have proposed a simple, portable device that tests whiskey (or any other beverage) without losing any to evaporation.
(via npr)
“Time was when the affable and sympathetic bartender moistened a lump of sugar with Angostura bitters, dropped in a lump of ice, neither too large nor too small, stuck in a miniature bar spoon and passed the glass to the client with a bottle of good bourbon from which said client was privileged to pour his own drink. In most places the price was 15 cents or two for quarter.”
Halloween 1990. Kindergarten. I was Super-Gabe. I had a gold lamé cape and a shirt with my logo: a G with a lightning bolt through it. I was in the afternoon class. About 30 minutes into our first lesson, another teacher came by with a tray full of plastic cups. “It’s witches brew” she said, giving a cup to our teacher. “Can we have some?” we asked. “No,” she said with a witch cackle. “It’ll turn you all into frogs.”
Halloween 1991. First grade. I was the Ghost of Elvis. I wore a sheet covered in glittery cursive writing. I didn’t quite get the joke, but judging from adults’ reactions, I knew it was funny. After lunch, another teacher came by with a tray full of plastic cups. “Time for witches to have their brew,” she said, giving my teacher a cup.
This went on for the next two years, then we moved away. Every Halloween I think about that tray of cups. I don’t know when, but at some point I decided they were probably full of booze.
Cocktail enthusiasm has a number of advantages. You can make parties, holidays and pretty much anything else that happens within 50 feet of liquor a lot more fun. You can unlock knowledge to impress dates or embarrass poseurs who are clouding your valuable bar space with misinformation.
But it’s not always easy. Not for you and not for whoever you’re close to. There will be nights when you have to explain why you just had to make a special outing for a bottle of small batch bitters. You may have to negotiate for shelf space that would otherwise be taken up by food. And you may have to explain why you keep buying citrus fruits and only using the peels. That mangy-looking orange you left sitting around after Old Fashioned night doesn’t win you any favors the next morning. Sometimes you can make the most of it. Sometimes you can squeeze out the juice for another drink or use it in a recipe (cooking can also create valuable shelf space by using up food). But sometimes there are no options. Sometimes there’s no explanation. Sometimes you have to save face. Sometimes you have to prove you’re not wasteful. Sometimes you have to eat a lemon.
There’s a moment of fear before I drink a Bloody Mary. When I bring the glass up for the first sip and it’s close enough to smell, I wonder if it’s going to be too thick or too thin; too spicy or too bland; too much like soup or not adequately stirred. I wonder if there are any curveballs—olives, pickles, cocktail sauce. I think about the lime, the horseradish and the molecules of fish inside the Worcestershire. Chemically, aesthetically…so much can go wrong. I’m prepared for the worst.
It usually works out, though.
Prohibition was bad, blah blah blah.
Look, we know the Eighteenth Amendment seems silly now. But before you wax your curly mustache and curse the teetotalers, consider one of the reasons behind the temperance movement.
In the 19th century, when domestic violence went unprosecuted and there was no such concept as marital rape, women and children were the primary victims of what the first episode of Prohibition calls “A Nation of Drunkards.” Over the century, they began cautiously to fight back, culminating in legislation they thought would bring an end to the alcohol-fueled abuse.
But don’t get your ironic knickerbockers in a twist. There were some benefits later, too.
There were a lot of reasons women rebelled, but add alcohol and men and women together drinking and dancing—exactly what the women who worked for temperance didn’t want—and you get sexual liberation, too. The historian, William Leuchtenburg, says in the film, “Men and women enjoyed sex more. Men had discovered the clitoris.”
I’m going to agree with Bourbon Women Association founder Peggy Noe Stevens on this one: Carry Nation is our least favorite Bourbon Woman. A Kentucky native, Carry waged war against saloons and taverns in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Although she died eight years before the passage of the…
Are you watching Prohibition?
TV critic David Bianculli says most shows on TV this fall are a big disappointment. But three offerings this upcoming Sunday night — Prohibition, Dexter and Homeland — are all excellent, invigorating and exceptionally intelligent.
I’ve seen a lot of bar carts in store windows lately. They’re very appealing. However, I would probably have to live in a larger apartment to justify owning one.
The cocktail typewriter. Make drinking educational.
