Posts Tagged ‘alchohol’

Barfly 201: Vermouth and Why Ordering a “Bone-Dry Martini” Makes You Sound Silly

A type of aperitif, vermouths are essentially aromatized, fortified wines (I’ll explain that a bit more in a minute). The word vermouth is derived from the German word for wormwood (the unjustly infamous ingredient in absinthe), “wermut,”which was one of the botanicals commonly added to vermouths. Wikipedia says that fortified wines with wormwood as the principal ingredient were being produced in Germany dating back to the 16th century, and while I don’t particularly trust Wikipedia when it comes to spirits*, that seems to make sense with the etymology of “vermouth.”

Vermouth producers basically take a wine, blend it with mistelle (sweetened grape juice or brandy), and steep a bunch of weird herbs and other botanicals (think gin) in the mix for a couple of weeks. Then they strain the herbs and junk, emulsify the now-aromatized brandy and wine together, pasteurize it, and let it sit in the fridge for another couple of weeks. The refrigeration allows impurities to crystallize and then be filtered out. NB: Keep your vermouths refrigerated at home – they have a relatively low alcohol content and it’ll keep their flavor longer.

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08

11 2011

How to Drink in Public at the Beach

Vacationing at the beach is awesome (even if you’re uber pale like the Edukatorz). While we’d love to rent out a private beach we alas are not thousandaires and must rely on public beaches. On a public beach we face the possibility of seeing fugly people in inappropriate swimsuits and children while sober. Unfortunately most public beaches do not allow booze (stupid open container laws!), but the Edukatorz are not ones for rules so we have ways around that.*

1) Thermoses/Camelbacks/Water Bottles, etc.

Some beaches do not allow glass containers, so you can either hate the environment and bring plastic bottles or bring something reusable. We like to put our booze in either a thermos or a water bottle. Not only are you doing your part for the environment, but no one’s the wiser.

2) The ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Method

We should hope that you’re as much of a fan of IASiP as we are, (you really should be) and if you are you are very familiar with this method. You put boxed wine in a diet coke can (without the coke obviously) and voila you can drink boxed wine anywhere! While we understand you may not want to always drink boxed wine, we’d also recommend dumping half of the coke out and putting rum or Jack Daniels in it or any other booze you may want.

From Flickr User Andy on Flickr

3) Koozies

Sometimes you just want a delicious beer, but you need to hide that from the rest of the World (and protect your beer from getting warm from your hands), thus the koozie was born. You should already have one of these for any activity that involves drinking beer outside, but keep one around in your beach bag.

* Don’t be a jackass and get so drunk that you annoy other people or almost drown. That’s stupid.

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08

07 2010


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