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Another weekend vanity. :) What will you be drinking election night? Will it vary depending on the outcome? I ordered a few fine bottles of Scotch from Master of Malt last spring. Because I got the very last bottle produced from this select cask, one of my neighbor friends in our little enclave here decided that, win or lose, we would open and consume this rare and highly rated cask strength Islay Single Malt called “Berry’s Own Selection”; an unchillfiltered batch made by Caol Ila Distillery in Port Askaig in 1980. It was drawn in 2011 from Cask #4938 and...

Bartending Tips From Days of Old What's old is new again, and nowhere is that more true than in the cocktail world. New twists on classic cocktails are popping up everywhere, but most of us haven't even figured out how to make them sans twists yet. Luckily, the bartenders of yore have reached forward in time to give us invaluable advice on mixing these drinks of yesteryear. And publishers looking to capitalize on the cocktail craze have reached back to the of bartenders at the turn of last century to reprint some of the most storied mixology guides. Long before...

So am going to get some Eggnog tomorrow. What alcohol do you guys like to put in eggnog?

DC to declare rickey as city's native cocktailAP – Thu, Jul 14, 2011 WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's capital is the birthplace of the rickey, a classic cocktail made with gin or whiskey, fresh lime juice and club soda. On Thursday, D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans will join cocktail aficionados to read a proclamation declaring the rickey as Washington's native cocktail and declaring July as rickey month in the district. The rickey was invented in 1883 at Shoomaker's, a bar once frequented by politicians and journalists. The J.W. Marriott hotel now sits on the Shoomaker's site, across the street from the...

Continental Airlines is joining the buy-on-board menu wars with specialty cocktails. The airline announced Wednesday that it will start selling mojitos, pomegranate martinis and Red Bull energy drinks. Starting Thursday, customers will be able to buy the drinks with alcohol for $9 and without it for $3.Continental joins other airlines in getting creative with the drinks they’re selling, going well beyond mini bottles of booze. Southwest Airlines sells a $4 screwdriver, a mix of vodka and orange juice. Delta sells a $7 Five O’clock Somewhere, a mix of rum, orange juice and cranberry-apple juice. Though airlines charge for alcoholic beverages,...

A UC researcher proposes that taste is in the tongue of the beholder when it comes to vodka. Photos By: Ashley Kempher, photojournalist; video by Jay Yocis University of Cincinnati Professor Dale W. Schaefer, in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department of UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science, is part of an international team of scientists studying to see if there is a scientific way to measure structure in vodkas. UC collaborated with scientists from Moscow State University. Since vodkas are 60 percent pure water and 40 percent pure ethanol (ethyl alcohol), many people conclude that vodkas are uniformly...

Global warming culture has arrived. A motocross event through local forests and city streets and a fashion "summit" are among the myriad side events scheduled for the United Nations' Climate Change Conference 2009, which begins Monday. There's also a new Copenhagen cocktail for delegates perhaps weary of heavy discussion.

First you cook the bacon, remove the fat and tear it into pieces. It sounds like the start of a nice breakfast, but it's actually the first part of mixologist Adam Seger's Baconcello recipe. The next step is steeping the bacon in vodka for 72 hours. Bacon-infused spirits and other so-called "carnivorous cocktails" are quirky options on the menus of some cutting-edge bars these days....

You can stiff the president on a policy issue and defy him on a political one, but who can turn down an invitation to the White House? Using one of the world’s most famous private residences as bait, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are unleashing a bipartisan charm offensive and exploiting every square inch of their new home to make friends and influence rivals. The social calendar suggests a return to the days of Camelot. Since moving into their new digs, the first couple has hosted a half-dozen gatherings — from bipartisan cocktail receptions to a public...

"It's funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel," Ernest Hemingway has Jake Barnes say to Brett Ashley in "The Sun Also Rises." They are sipping nice icy Martinis at the bar of the Palace Hotel in Madrid and marveling at the elegant professionalism of bartenders. "Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite any more," Brett says, and Jake agrees: "No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice." If only that were still true. Once upon a time, hotel bars set the standard for sophisticated drinking, with...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fruity cocktail may not only be fun to drink but may count as health food, U.S. and Thai researchers said on Thursday. Adding ethanol -- the type of alcohol found in rum, vodka, tequila and other spirits -- boosted the antioxidant nutrients in strawberries and blackberries, the researchers found. Any colored fruit might be made even more healthful with the addition of a splash of alcohol, they report in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. Dr. Korakot Chanjirakul and colleagues at Kasetsart University in Thailand and scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture...

Sometimes two vices are better than one. Drinking large amounts of coffee protects the livers of people who drink large amounts of alcohol, a new study shows. The results partly explain why so many heavy alcohol drinkers escape cirrhosis of the liver, say the authors. The idea that coffee drinking might benefit alcohol users arose more than a decade ago, when cardiologist Arthur Klatsky and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, California, noticed that fewer heavy drinkers were dying of cirrhosis--scarring that hardens the liver--than expected. A study at the time suggested coffee drinking might be...

Just because you are on the go doesn’t mean you don’t need a recipe for a cocktail. Or 6,000. Drinknation will help you out. It’s a new mobile application which allows you to access 6,000 mixed drink recipes right off your phone. Available from most of the U.S. carriers and several international ones, with more being added as the word gets around. You can browse recipes by name, theme, ingredient or category. You can find out what is popular with all the cool kids. It even offers drinking games you can play. What's fun about Drinknation is that the content...

PROVO - There is a new coffee shop in town, but it's no Starbucks. The entry is framed with little white Christmas lights, there are half-a-dozen couches to go along with a few tables, and the walls are yellow, red, green and purple. Opposite a faux-brick wall there is a wall dedicated to nonsense. "Girls are like ladders," one customer wrote. Another scribbled: "I love yellow people." It's all the same to owner Christin Johnson. She's just happy the people who jotted down the messages wanted to stick around in her Vermillion Skies De-cafe and Lounge long enough to pen...

Kabul's Only Bar Gives Expats an Escape (AP) - KABUL, Afghanistan -- In Taliban times, it would have been unimaginable: a fully stocked Irish pub serving whiskey and cold beer in the heart of Afghanistan's ultra-Islamic capital. In the post-Taliban era, Kabul's new Irish Club -- the country's only bar -- is still unthinkable, at least for Afghans. But it's a huge success with the many foreigners who are desperate for a little bit of nightlife. "Walk in that front door and you'll find a very different world in here," says Allan Ferguson, a 57-year-old Australian businessman sitting on...

<p>This week, The Professor, our cocktailian bartender, makes a couple of tempting drinks created at San Francisco's Chaya Brasserie -- and he learns that they can lead to matrimony.</p> <p>"He'll have a draft beer, and could you make me an Apple Martini like the ones they make at Chaya Brasserie?" asks the female half of a youngish couple who walk into the bar.</p>