Does this merlot make you horny, baby?
Researchers concluded that levels of sexual desire were higher in women who were moderate drinkers of red wine than in their counterparts who preferred other alcoholic drinks, or were teetotal.One theory put forward by the team of Italian doctors who carried out the study is that chemical compounds found in red wine may improve sexual functioning by increasing blood flow to key areas of the body.
Bleaaah! Just in case you end up in prison.
There should be a fine layer of dead yeast and such lying on the bottom of the bottle. This stuff isn't poisonous, but it tastes awful and is known to give you bad gas.
Yeasty-beasties cloud the wine, taste bad and can give you diarrhea. Aesthetics count. It is difficult to be proud of cloudy wine but a crystal clear 14% wine is something to be proud of, regardless of how you did it or how cheap it tastes!
Add the two packages of Kool Aid powder to the wine in the new bottle, cap the bottle, then shake it for a few seconds to mix it thoroughly. Try tasting a bit, it will probably be awful. Don't dump it out, it will get way better! Adding some more sugar here may improve the flavor a bit, but it really needs to age a little while longer.
I got on a bit of a craft liquor kick a while back, and recently started making wine, syrups, shrubs, and other bartending-related treats. The latest was to make gin (and allspice dram, but that's still aging; check back near the middle of July).
There are many many recipes online for making home gin, most of them are of the infusion of botanicals into vodka variety. Some would say that this isn't making gin, but simply infusing botanicals into vodka. They would be partially correct, I suppose. Gin is essentially a neutral grain spirit infused with botanicals (specifically juniper berries), either before or after, or during the distillation process. In any case I had to do a re-distilling in order to get anything even remotely tasty the first time around.
So, here's what I did.
The list of added botanicals is large, and can include orris root, bitter almond, angelica root, rosemary, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and others. I didn't have any of these others, so I made due with the above list. The process in the online recipe was terse, but simple:
Soak juniper for 24 hours, rest of botanicals for 9 hours. Fine strain.
The resulting concoction was brown, cloudy, and horrible tasting. Probably, the recipe omitted an important step:
Add vodka to fill 750ml.
I took half of the foul tincture (about 200ml) and topped up a 375ml wine bottle with straight vodka, and the result was a clear, cleaner, transparent gold liquid. It still didn't taste like gin, but it tasted a bit better. My guess was that if we filled a 750ml bottle, it would have turned out ok.
Instead, since I didn't have that much vodka left, I ran it through an internal alembic still:
... yep, an asparagus cooker, the lid reversed, and filled with ice, with a measuring cup set inside to collect the spirit. Hint: keep changing the ice, and keep the burner set on low. Amazingly, this method of purification was quite effective, giving me 200ml of fine, clear, 50% alcohol distillate. A little math suggested I could add 50ml of filtered water to bring it down to drinking strength. This tasted exactly like gin.
For those interested in trying to make gin at home without going crazy and burning the place down, Jeffrey Morgenthaler has an interesting article about infusing gin here.
For those who like fire and explosions, try this reference. Both have some interesting recipes.
This looks good enough to drink to.
Join the Beachbum and 200 seminar attendees June 12th at the historic Mai-Kai restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, where we'll separate fact from fiction with a two-hour event entitled "Who's Your Daddy? A Mai Tai Paternity Test." The seminar is part of the Hukilau, Florida's annual four-day festival of all things Tiki. Drinks, we are happy to report, will be served.
Because, if you have to be a drunk, be a classy drunk.
Intoxicatedly Charming, or a Wasted Bore?Your mouth is always a pretty good indicator: If someone is kissing it, you're being charming. If someone is ramming their fist into it, well, not so much.
December 5th marks the 75th anniversary of Repeal Day, the end of 13 years of prohibition in the U.S. You should celebrate tonight.
Here are a few winners:
11. Prostitutes? Oh hell yes, there are prostitutes. Tons of them. So, let me get this straight, I canâ..t look at a naked picture of a person on the Internet in the privacy of my home, but it is okay to go out in public and buy a few for the night?13. Not only do you have to get your bossâ..s approval to obtain a liquor license, but you must also get the companyâ..s approval to rent property, have a telephone, or get satellite TV.
The Top 20 Reasons Not to Move to Dubai (in no particular order!) By Tia Oâ..Neill
19/20 for me (I messed up and put a salt rim on a Sidecar. That was stupid).
Unless you include the large concentration of alcohol in it. Me, I've got 2 bottles of it at home. It's good if you don't do something stupid like take straight shots of it.
Absinthe's Mind-Altering Mystery Solved - Yahoo! News
An analysis of century-old bottles of absinthe - the kind once quaffed by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso to enhance their creativity - may end the controversy over what ingredient caused the green liqueur's supposed mind-altering effects .The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80- to 100-proof.
In recent years, the psychedelic nature of absinthe has been hotly debated. Absinthe was notorious among 19th-century and early 20th-century bohemian artists as "the Green Fairy" that expanded the mind. After it became infamous for madness and toxic side effects among drinkers, it was widely banned.
Yikes!!
FYI, here's a traditional Snake Bite recipe:
Star-Telegram.com: | 03/15/2008 | Hundreds of bottles of booze with a bite seized in Palo Pinto
Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents seized 411 bottles of illegal hooch Thursday at Bayou Bob's Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch in Palo Pinto County.But it wasn't your typical variety of moonshine: the bottles of vodka also contained 10-inch rattlesnakes.
[Bayou Bob's owner,] Popplewell received widespread attention last year when Texas wildlife officials decided to tighten regulations for the collection of turtles. He is believed to be largest buyer of turtles in the state.
Time to get rid of these stupid 75-year-old laws that don't apply anymore. This means you Utah.
Virginia's Sangria Ban At Issue in 2 Hearings - washingtonpost.com
A Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control agent conducting a routine inspection in 2006 cited La Tasca Spanish Tapas Bar and Restaurant in Old Town Alexandria for violating an obscure 75-year-old state law:It's illegal to serve sangria in Virginia.
The fruity cocktail of wine and brandy that is a must-have at Spanish restaurants violates a law that forbids mixing wine or beer with spirits. If convicted, a bartender could go to jail for a year.
Well, this I wasn't expecting from a minister. Soliciting an undercover cop? Perhaps. But not this.
WBIR.COM - Police charge minister with indecent exposure, DUI
Police say 58-year-old Tommy Tester urinated in front of children at a car wash while wearing a skirt. He will remain free on bond until an October court hearing.He is also charged with having an open container of alcohol in his vehicle.
Tester is a minister of Gospel Baptist Church and works for Christian radio station WZAP, 690 AM. The owner of the radio station, Al Morris, is asking for people to pray for Tester.
A report also accuses Tester of offering police officers sexual favors and says an open bottle of vodka and empty oxycodone prescription bottle was found in his car when Tester was arrested Friday.
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.
Fruity cocktails count as health food, study finds - Yahoo! News
Sure. Why not? My cats drink wine.
Newsvine - Pet Shop Owner Creates Beer for Dogs
After a long day hunting, there's nothing like wrapping your paw around a cold bottle of beer. So Terrie Berenden, a pet shop owner in the southern Dutch town of Zelhem, created a beer for her Weimaraners made from beef extract and malt.
"Once a year we go to Austria to hunt with our dogs, and at the end of the day we sit on the verandah and drink a beer. So we thought, my dog also has earned it," she said.
Berenden consigned a local brewery to make and bottle the nonalcoholic beer, branded as Kwispelbier. It was introduced to the market last week and advertised it as "a beer for your best friend."
Cool gallery of anti-alcohol posters from soviet propaganda era.
The Museum of Anti-Alcohol Posters | ﾐ籍ｽﾑ.ﾐｸﾐｰﾐｻﾐｺﾐｾﾐｳﾐｾﾐｻﾑ.ﾐｽﾑ.ﾐｵ ﾐｿﾐｻﾐｰﾐｺﾐｰﾑ.ﾑ.
I was just in the middle of writing a long and tedious essay, about how to tell a real anti-Semite from a person who too-loudly rejects the charge of anti-Semitism, when a near-perfect real-life example came to hand. That bad actor and worse director Mel Gibson, pulled over for the alleged offence of speeding and the further alleged offence of speeding under the influence, decided that he needed to demand of the arresting officer whether he was or was not Jewish and that he furthermore needed to impart the information that all the world's wars are begun by those of Semitic extraction.
Call me thin-skinned if you must, but I think that this qualifies. I also think that the difference between the blood-alcohol levels -- and indeed the speed limits -- that occasioned the booking are insufficient to explain the expletives (as Gibson has since claimed in a typically self-pitying and verbose statement put out by his publicist). One does not abruptly decide, between the first and second vodka, or the ticks of the indicator of velocity, that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are valid after all.
Mel Gibson's Hollywood career is hanging in the balance after the star allegedly screamed anti-semitic abuse at a police officer after being arrested for drink-driving.
The 50-year-old Oscar-winner, who is a devout Catholic, issued a grovelling statement apologising for his 'despicable' tirade and blaming the outburst on his life-long battle with alcoholism.
The Mad Max and Lethal Weapon star was arrested in Malibu, California, in the early hours of Friday morning after being clocked driving at almost twice the speed limit.
Gibson allegedly yelled at the sheriff's deputy who had stopped him: 'F****** Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.' He then challenged officer James Mee: 'Are you a Jew?'
'Alcoholic' Mel apologises for Jewish insults | the Daily Mail
It's no big surprise that 12-step programs don't work, and I've heard about the culty behaviour of AA, but this is still a pretty interesting read.
The A.A. founder Bill Wilson declared that alcoholism is a "spiritual disease" that is caused by:
A controversial Texas program to send undercover agents into bars to arrest drunks has been halted after a firestorm of protest from the public.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has "temporarily suspended" what it called "Operation Last Call" even though it still believes it was worthwhile, commission spokeswoman Carolyn Beck said on Thursday.
"We understand that everything has room for improvement, this included," she said.
She said most of those arrested in the sting operations had been "dangerously drunk" and might have tried to drive if TABC agents had not busted them.
Three words that I've never seen together before...
Josh Karpf: In Search of the Perfect Pork Martini
The pork Martini serves many needs on many levels! In these pomo days, when old formulas are reborn with futile twists for our fickle, fin-de-siècle tastes, the meat cocktail stands out above wobbly, cranberry-tainted attempts at bar trendiness. When one abandons the olive garnish for that of a pork-rind wedge, the pork Martini merges the flavors of the working class with that of wealthier ones, bridging social strata. It has the humanitarian goal of bettering the nutrition of alcoholics, offering protein for those who prefer their lunches liquid: since meat digests longer, it will both inebriate and offer nutrients for longer periods! It will open new markets to pork consumption, adding American jobs to every level of the meat-industrial complex. And, finally, it looks really weird.
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