Entries tagged with 'alcohol'
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[Photograph: Kerry Saretsky] When I was young, I spent Halloween night bobbing for apples with my hands behind my back. I remember thinking how silly it was, when I could get a perfectly delicious apple coated in caramel neatly perched on a stick. And now even that seems barbaric when I can drink my caramel apples from a beer bottle. Brothers Toffee Apple Cider tastes of sweet, alcoholic, bubbling apple cider with melted caramel stirred up inside, described quite correctly by the company as tasting something like "cream soda." It was originally developed for Halloween, but was so popular the company now bottles it year-round. For an American away from America during the all-American season from Halloween to Thanksgiving, the...
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We tasted ten brown ales—from bright, hoppy ones to the sweet and pruney. Whether you're looking for something bitter to see you through the World Series or a more warming, chocolately beer on a rainy night, we have favorites for both.
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A good brown ale is gentle, smooth, and wonderfully drinkable, pint after pint. Despite their low alcohol, these are flavorful malty beers. We tried five brown ales—check out our favorites.
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"Long before they were hallmarks of any cocktail geek's liquor cabinets, Gourmet ran recipes for homemade allspice liqueur (1977) and Cherry Bounce (1966)." [Flickr: lulubrooks] This news of Gourmet's shuttering has touched every food lover, and this sense of sadness and disappointment extends into the world of drinks. While the magazine's drinks coverage always seemed to feel more natural when the topic was wine, over the decades the editors occasionally gave spirits and cocktails a serious eye. Perhaps nowhere has this been more evident recently than on the magazine's website, which features drinks plumbed from Gourmet's archives arranged by decade, starting with the first issue in 1941. This series of drinks forms a curious liquid time capsule. While certain drinks...
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If you can't make it to Germany this year for Oktoberfest festivities, you can at least drink in solidarity. We tasted twelve beers—a few traditional German märzen beers head-to-head with some American interpretations from craft brewers.
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Serious Eats contributor Paul Clarke calls upon mixologists to make cocktails with vodka in his blog The Cocktail Chronicles. He says vodka works well "as a vehicle and softener for bold flavors, rather than simply as an alcohol-delivery device."...
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Nothing like a good ol' sporting goods store kegger to get the party started! Photograph from Keggers of Yore. I've never been to a kegger, but now I don't have to; I can just browse through the photos at Keggers of Yore and live vicariously through these nameless intoxicated partygoers! (Waning: some photos NSFW.) [via conky]...
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Photograph from Danielle Scott on Flickr Last night around 11 p.m., after the heat had nibbled at the 100-degree mark in Seattle and while my house was still in the toasty mid-80s (we’re not much on air conditioning here in the Pacific Northwest), I decided that while the fan was doing the best job it could in keeping me from melting into a puddle on the couch, stronger action was needed. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to stock up on ice to take the edge off the heat wave we’re experiencing, so I broke out the crusher and prepared a nuclear-gauge heat buster: a Queen’s Park Swizzle. I wrote about the drink last fall, to coincide with a story...
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Artisanal spirits are the new micro-brew. It seems as if small-scale liquor dudes are rivaling celebrity deaths in number these days. Unfortunately, I’ve found that most of these booze-artisans are pretty much snake-oil salesman capitalizing on the human penchant for the little guy while passing off bad-to-mediocre vodka. I pretty much expected the same thing when I toured Wisconsin’s Death’s Door Spirits last week. (My apologies to owner Brian Ellison and his team for the assumption.) But I was pleasantly surprised. Ellison is one of those dudes who reminds you of the great chefs, a guy who works according to a personal standard that exceeds most, essentially competing against himself. From his website to his marketing materials to the quality...
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©iStockphoto.com/jsberry For a spirit that’s earned a reputation over the decades as a skull-thumping, inhibition-be-gone, regret-inducing, everyone-gone-wild kind of drink, tequila is getting a lot of respectable love nowadays. And as Jonathan Miles wrote in last weekend’s New York Times, and as I wrote in the August issue of Wine & Spirits, bartenders are increasingly turning to tequila in their pursuit of new frontiers for mixological exploration. It's been a long time coming. Mostly absent from American bars until the second half of the 20th-century, tequila quickly became a hard-partying kind of drink, and all sorts of alcoholic indiscretions have been blamed on the fiery spirit. As Miles describes it, until recently, "Tequila specials were like petri dishes for...
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