October 8, 2012
Wait, before you start, let me say that I know what you’re going to say. “Shot?” you would have said if I hadn’t stopped you, “aren’t shots just something you throw down to ingest quickly, not worrying about the taste just the result?” Luckily, I stopped you, cause you would have been 100% wrong.
Well, maybe not 100%, as you, like me, may have grown up throwing down cheap tequila and gawd-awful mixes in shot glasses, and so may have been trained to think about “shots” a certain way. But shots can be wonderful: smaller packages of lovingly mixed together drinks. These shots are ideal for when you want a quick taste, for when you want to send a little special drink to that little special someone, for when you just need a rapid fling with a drink and not a full on affair, and for many other situations. More well-thought-out shots are showing on many snazzy bar menus, but the trend of better shots has really been kicked off by the new book The Best Shots You’ve Never Tried, by Andrew Bohrer.
Full disclosure: I know Andrew Bohrer (as anyone—meaning: you—who has read this blog for a while knows). I’ve had some of his drinks in my books and am a fan, as you should be, of his cuddly-curmudgeon cocktail-and-bar blog Cask Strength. But even if I wouldn’t recognize him even if I was sitting next to him at the bar, I’d still suggest picking up his new shots book cause it’s packed with great drinks, great charm, great booze history, and great drinks (said twice cause it matters most). I’m gonna highlight a few drinks from the book this week to prove my point, starting with the below number, The Wing Beneath My Wings, which will positively make you sing.
Wind Beneath My Wings
1 ounce single malt Scotch
.5 ounce Pedro Ximénez sherry
1 lemon twist
1. Stir and strain into a shot glass.
2. Garnish with a lemon twist. Makes one shot.
All shot week recipes and photos are excerpted from The Best Shots You’ve Never Tried: 100+ Intoxicating Oddities You’ll Actually Want to Put Down by Andrew Bohrer (August 2012, F+W Media).
September 24, 2012
It’s that time again Seattle bar lovers (or those lucky folks getting ready to visit the lovely city of Seattle, the Emerald City, Jet City, and known to many as Awesome-Bar-City). The time where I put my recent Seattle Magazine Bar Hop columns (like in Bar Hop posts past) in an easy-to-read bulleted format, so you can catch up on what bars I’ve been drinking at lately, what I said about said bars, and why you should probably go visit these bars soon.
• Vessel (in Downtown)
• Saint John’s Bar and Eatery (in Capitol Hill)
• Macleod’s Scottish Pub (in Ballard)
• The Gerald (in Ballard)
Let your drinking commence.
Tags: Bar Hop, Bars, Cocktail News, Macleod’s Scottish Pub, Saint John’s Bar and Eatery, Seattle, The Gerald, Vessel
Posted in: Bar Hop, Bars, Cocktail News, Seattle Magazine
September 11, 2012
As I mentioned in an earlier post about Seattle Magazine, I’ve been doing some blogging there on the subject of drinks, drinking, drinkers, and pretty much everything bubbly and boozy that you’d expect. And now, for those who don’t read the Seattle Mag (which, by the way, you should even if you don’t live here in Seattle cause it’s all kinds of cool), I’m here to do a little wrap up, in bulleted fashion, of recent pieces, cause I know, I just know, that you don’t want to miss any of them:
• Cocktails for Beginners: Because You Never Forget the First Time
• Five Cocktail Recipes That Bring You Summer All Year Long
• Five Back to School Cocktails
• Essex Opens with a Host of Homemade Ingredients and Craft Cocktails
• Five Olympics-inspired Cocktail Recipes
• Five Refreshing Wine Cocktails
August 16, 2012
It’s summertime (still—honest) and the living is wine cocktails-y. At least it should be cause wine cocktail are refreshing, and un-snooty, and fun, and delicious, and all that. And recently, as if me saying it aloud and in digital form wasn’t enough, I did a little interview with Woman’s World magazine, so it’s in print. And print is forever. So, pick up the most recent issue of said magazine. I also have the page with me here below (but the whole issue is fun, naturally), which has some wine cocktails talk, two recipes from the book Wine Cocktails, notes about how wine and wine cocktails are healthy (including protecting breasts, which I’m all for and which is just another reason why cocktails are the definition of awesome), and something about Ladybug Bling–which can’t be bad. So, read up:
Tags: Cocktail News, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Protecting Your Breasts, Wine, wine cocktail recipe, Wine Cocktails, Woman’s World
Posted in: Cocktail News, Recipes, Wine, Wine Cocktails
August 13, 2012
Who wouldn’t want to make their day or summer or life better (or gooder)? I mean, even if you’re walking on sunshine, walking on sunshine with a good drink is going to make it a more memorable experience (provided you don’t have too many and slip off the sunshine. But I digress). Which, if you follow along to a logical conclusion, means that every life could be better (or gooder). But how, you may ask me, how can that be possible? Well, one way to start might be with the Good Life Report. Just look at the name—it implies a life that’s good. Now, to take it up a notch, I’m gonna suggest that you look at two pieces I recently had in said Good Life Report: A Somewhat Sicilian Summer Cocktail Star and Give the Imbibable Power to the People. Both contain tasty drink recipes and words of making-life-better wisdom. Okay, that last bit is probably BS, but hey, at least the drinks are tasty, and could probably get you walking on sunshine. That’s enough of a thing to get you over there reading them, right? Right!
July 27, 2012
Now, don’t get jealous, loyal Spiked Punch readers (or, reader, as the case may be). But I’ve been blogging again for the fine folks at Seattle Magazine. It seemed like a good summer thing to do, spreading around the cheer like one of those sprinklers that spreads cheer around (okay, you may think there’s not a sprinkler that spreads cheer around, and you may be right. But what if you’re wrong? Think of how awesome that would be. Just think of it). In case you are only a reader here, I thought it’d be nice of me–and I am seriously nice, especially if you’re buying me a drink. Or three–to put up a little list of five of the bubbly, stirred, and shaken posts I’ve Seattle-Magazine’d up recently. So, here they are:
• Got a Boozy Sweet Tooth? Five Spiked Desserts
• Local Bars with Great Summer Cocktails and Patios
• Anytime Cocktails: Drinks for Five Different Hours of the Day
• Tap into the World of Beer Cocktails
• 5 Backyard Baseball Cocktails
July 2, 2012
In case you might have missed it (and I’m sorry for you if you did), I recently wrote up a little post for Seattle Magazine on the healing powers of beer cocktails and the awesome new book by Howard and Ashley Stelzer, Beer Cocktails: 50 Superbly Crafted Cocktails That Liven Up Your Lagers and Ales. If you did miss said post, go read it now (it has four recipes from the book and one from around this here Seattle). If you read it, and still haven’t ordered the beer cocktails book, then let me tell you a bit more about it, in bulleted fashion. It has:
• A great starter section called Beer Basics
• Four swell chapters full of recipes: Lager Than Life, Abbey Road, Beyond the Shadow of a Stout, The Dark at the End of the Tunnel
• A jolly personality that leads to lines like: “But don’t lose your head—it just takes practice,” in their Sleepy Hollow recipe (which is a bit different from the Good Spirits one, but just as tasty. Or, almost)
• Drinks titled with wit and creativity, such as: Joe Pêche, KnickerTwister, The Bishop’s Wife, Phil Collins
• A bubbly ton of beer information, which’ll be handy for newbies and hardened beer-o-philes alike
• Quotes! Such as: “It is a fair wind that blew men to the ale”—Washington Irving
Now, that’s a book, friends, that will make your summer tastier, your weekends more weekendy, and your life fuller.
May 25, 2012
Back a bit ago (not so long ago that it was, say, past century, but the recent past, which you probably still at least somewhat remember, unless you were hit on the head by a lead pipe, in which case you probably have deeper problems that the fact that you’ve forgotten what I’m about to remind you of) I wrote an article on Seattle’s Happiest Happy Hour Bartenders. In it, I talked about Bryn at the Rob Roy and how he made the more fantastico fizzes in lands near and far. Well, here’s the photographic evidence (a note: when it came out, I had already slurped off the top 1/2-inch of foamy goodness that was firm above the top of the glass):
Look at the foam on that fizz! Amazing. It was a Fine Point Fizz Fizz, with a wild, I tell you, wild range of ingredients: sherry, Strega, pineapple and lime juice, sparklin’ cava, and egg white. Not for the boring. And luckily, I’m not boring. I’m so un-boring that I wrote a short blog post for the Seattle Mag on poets and drinks and mentioned Bryn again–cause he’s all literary–with some wacky lit-tastic combining of Wallace Stevens himself and the drink (which is on the Rob Roy menu don’t cha know) the Mr. New Yorker. And here’s a pic of it (it’s a darn good drink even though un-fizzy, by the way, with gin, sherry, Cointreau, dry vermouth):
Here’s another un-boring thing: if you see me at the Rob Roy, and Bryn there’s, and you quote Wallace Stevens, I will buy you a drink. And give you a hug. Unless you just want one of the two.
