LIFESTYLE BEYOND THE GLASS
[COLORS] Issue 8 JUNE/JULY 2010
ETS TICKSALE ON
! NOW
JuLy 21 – 25, 2010 This summer the international cocktail community will converge on a city where spirits live 24/7. Shaken from their slumber within the bottle, the spirits will take on a life of their own in New Orleans at Tales of the Cocktail 2010. Cocktail enthusiasts looking to partake in this summer’s festivities can sample the best of Tales of the Cocktail with the Founder’s Day Package. For $595, this package gives access to 17 of the festival’s most popular events and includes signature Tales of the Cocktail 2010 merchandise. For more information on the Founder’s Day Package and to reserve your place at this summer’s spirited events, visit www.TalesoftheCocktail.com
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our generous annual partners:
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Ingredients
ISSUE 8
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Note from the Editor Design: Labels
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Shades of Cane
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The many faces of rum By Ed Hamilton
Book Review: How to Booze
The Color Beer
And everything in between By Brian Yaeger
Eat Your Booze
Honey bourbon roasted chicken
Taming the White Dog Unaged whiskey and what to do with it By M. Quinn Sweeney
New Booze
Ransom Old Tom Gin By Dominic Venegas
22 A Historical look at Gay Bars
Culture and politics in a glass By Carolyn Gerin
30 Beyond Red and White Wine
Spanning the rainbow By Gus Vahlkamp
34 Hard Times for the Hard Shelled
The new Campari By Ken Walczak
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Websites to Drink to
39 Libation
By Ale Gasso
Laureate
40 Leprechauns Aside
How green beer is going to save the world By Corey Hill
44 Recipes
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LIFESTYLE BEYOND THE GLASS
Editor In Chief: Daniel Yaffe TRAVEL Editor: Paul Ross Art DIrector: Lance Jackson Web Developer: Aman Ahuja Copy Editor: Sam Devine
Director of Operations: Pablo Perez Intern: Heather Stewart Advisory Board: Jeremy Cowan, H. Ehrmann, Hondo Lewis, David Nepove, Debbie Rizzo, Genevieve Robertson, Carrie Steinberg, Gus Vahlkamp, Dominic Venegas contributOrs: Robert DeBusschere (Cover Art) debusscheredesign.com, Ed Hamilton, Carolyn Gerin, Ale Gasso, Donald Gruener donaldgruener.com, Corey Hill, Lance Jackson lancejackson.net, Markus Reinhardt www.flickr.com/photos/tuxxilla, Denise Sakaki, M. Quinn Sweeney, Gus Vahlkamp, Dominic Venegas, Ken Walzak, Brian Yaeger www.beerodyssey.com Thank you: Sangita Devaskar, Sacha Ferguson, Sonia Meyer, Rivera PR, Jessi Rifkind, Sarah Schulweiss, Skylar Werde Publisher: Open Content www.opencontent.tv Eriq Wities & Daniel Yaffe
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The entire contents of Drink Me magazine are Š 2010 and may not be reproduced or transmitted in any manner without written permission. All rights reserved.
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Please drink responsibly
Note from the Editor
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s you’re celebrating our red, white, and blue this summer with one of many drinks in hand, don’t forget the role that color has played in everything that you pour down your throat. Much like the artificial hues that have made fast-food as we know it, spurring the backlash and push towards more natural products, the color of the drink is almost as important as its taste. Color is the first thing that you notice – the deep red in your glass of wine, the golden brown of your amber ale, and red of your Negroni. You drink the color with your eyes before you take your first sip.
crafted with blue agave from the highland ranches of don josé pilar contreras 100%
www.donpilar.com
We’re bringing color to your world this summer (it’s kind of like Pleasantville, but with more alcohol). From the hues of brew to orange and pink wines and shades of rum – across the color wheel to the insects of Campari. We couldn’t slide down the rainbow and celebrate San Francisco’s Gay Pride Month without an article about the history of gay bars. We catalog how bars have played a large role in the gay rights movement … and our hope is that (gay) bars will continue to be a hotbed of equality. I’ll drink to that. We know that you’ll be green with envy that we’ll be slinging back cocktails in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail in July. Feel free to join - we’ll be celebrating the cocktail in all its glory. I wish you a colorful summer and tasty drinks! Daniel Yaffe
www.drinkmemag.com 2010 ultimate spirits challenge “Excellent. Highly recommended.” 94/100 points
Design: Labels Bear Flag: A successful blend of Petite Syrah, Zinfandel, Alicante Bouschet, Merlot, and Tempranillo, Bear Flag’s red wine is draped in a beautiful mural – a masterpiece by Argentinian artist Eduardo Bertone that each bottle is proud to wear. When modern art meets the grape, the colorful chaos is 100 per cent Californian and ridiculously entertaining. www.bearflagwine.com
Redemption:
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The second release of Redemption’s wine, 2008 Sauvignon Blanc from Mendocino is covered by a colorful quilted pattern of found papers and fabrics stitched together by artist Thomas Campbell of Santa Cruz. We’re still trying to figure out how Mao on a piece of Chinese currency fits into the redemption theme. After a couple more glasses, I’m sure we’ll have some answers.
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www.redemptionwines.com
Shades of Cane By Ed Hamilton, Ministry of Rum.com
Few products we consume come in as many different colors as rum. From clear white rums like Flor de Caña Extra Dry, to Kraken (a caramel-colored rum that is as dark as giant squid ink) – rums come in a rainbow of colors, some natural and some manipulated by the distiller.
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ven the choice of container is a matter of consideration for the distiller or bottler. Clear bottles come in a variety of hues from crystal clear through hints of greens, yellows and blues. And then there are colored glass bottles used to protect the contents from the effects of exposure to light. Some bottles are colored to a point that we can’t even ascertain the actual color of the contents until we pour them into a clear glass under natural light. In the course of drinking and evaluating sugar cane spirits, as part of my work as the author at the Ministry of Rum, I approach new samples of rum in a variety of ways, or more accurately samples approach me in a variety of ways. The first thing we see when we are introduced to a new product is its color. Our perception of color is a very powerful force when evaluating anything from apples to, well, zebras.
Let’s start with cachaça. Most cachaça in the U.S. market today is pretty much devoid of color, despite claims of having been rested, stored or aged in barrels prior to being bottled. Since most of the barrels used to age cachaça are either well-used cognac or whisky barrels, or constructed of Brazilian hardwoods, they don’t impart much color to the spirit. At this time there are only a few cachaças that have been aged long enough to have gained more than a hint of color so it is pretty safe to say that the color, if any, is the result of aging. Take a look at Leblon and you might see a hint of color from the barrel aging. Weber Haus imports a cachaça that is aged even longer and has even more color.
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n staying with spirits made from fresh sugar cane juice being imported to the U.S. today – specifically rhum agricole from the French Caribbean islands – none of these clear spirits have been aged. In contrast, nearly every clear or so-called white or silver rum from most of the other rum-producing countries in the Caribbean has been aged inside oak barrels and then carbon-filtered to remove the color gained during aging. By law, the age of these molasses-based spirits
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If I am at a distillery, the first glimpse of the spirit is generally in the form of a clear liquid quietly overflowing from a small tube in the middle of a copper basin that drains to a spirit receiver tank. If I’m evaluating a preproduction sample from a blender or bottler in my office, the first things I see are the clear, or brown, plastic flasks commonly used to ship alcohol and reduce the risk of breakage. If the producer is further along in the development cycle, the spirit may be packaged for retail sale and I see the same product you would see on a store or bar shelf. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to be evaluating samples from
newly opened oak barrels in a warehouse in the tropics, and although the light is generally less than ideal in these cool warehouses, by the time the copper thief (the copper or brass tube used to draw a sample out) is pulled from the bung hole, my sense of smell, touch and hearing have prepared me for what I am about to taste.
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varies from one year in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico to two years for rums coming from Venezuela. The oldest carbon-filtered white rum used to come from Nicaragua but more recently, Demerara Distillers Ltd. released a special edition six-year-old white rum.
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epending on who you talk to you’ll be told that carbon-filtering to take out the color gained from aging doesn’t affect the flavor, but I tend to disagree. On the islands, most natives prefer white rum, unless you’re on Barbados where dark rums are very popular. Closer to home, there are a growing number of colorless rums from micro-distilleries across this country. Some of these haven’t seen the inside of a barrel, though most have been filtered to improve the flavor of the bottled product. Reading the country of origin can tell the welltrained eye a lot about the contents of a clear bottle of sugar cane spirits.
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Then there are rums that vary from a subtle gold to dark brown and even black. After carefully trying to ascertain the color of the spirit in the bottle, I look for clues about the spirit on the label. The producer and country of origin are often clues to what’s in the bottle. Myers’s Rum from Jamaica, for instance, is known for its dark, caramel color. I also expect to see a lot of caramel color in the dark, so-called “navy rums.”
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While caramel color isn’t bad in-and-ofitself, the dark mahogany hues resulting from the addition of copious amounts of caramel shouldn’t be confused with the color gained from decades of contact with the charred oak wood of an aging barrel. It’s not always easy to tell which
rums are caramel-colored, but most distillers add at least a small amount of caramel after blending and before bottling in order to maintain a consistent color in their product. Unlike the single malt whisky industry, most rum retailers don’t want to have different colored bottles of the same label on the shelf. Every barrel colors its contents at a different rate depending on a matrix of variables including the proof of the spirit in the barrel, age, size of the barrel, environmental conditions and what the distiller is hoping to accomplish. Montanya Distillers, in Silverton Colorado, uses small, new barrels, and attain a golden color in only a few months of aging. Zacapa, in Guatemala, puts their oldest rum in old barrels to limit the effect of the wood on the spirit as it matures. Certainly there is more chemical interaction between the spirit and the wood in a warm, tropical environment. Though not always conclusive, there is a simple test you can perform to see if a bottle of rum contains old-aged spirits. Pour a couple of ounces of the rum into a clean, thin glass and hold it over a white piece of paper in natural light. Tilt the glass and if you can see a green tint in the meniscus, or on the white paper, the rum you are holding has been aged more than a few years. On the other hand, the lack of a green meniscus doesn’t necessarily mean that the rum wasn’t aged. It could be that some caramel has been added, or the light isn’t bright enough, or the glass is too thick, or you need to drink some of the rum and try again. As you can imagine there’s a lot more to the rum in your glass than you might think. And so, the research continues.
Book Review: Swallow your Words
How to Booze: Exquisite Cocktails & Unsound Advice Authors: Jordan Kaye & Marshall Altier Subject: Cocktails & Mischief Rating: 5 out of 5 Cheers
Synopsis: The “plot” of this book follows you, the reader, as you attempt to navigate through hypothetical yet highly possible, awkward situations. The book recommends delicious and ironically appropriate (or, if necessary, appropriately inappropriate) cocktails as a means to grapple with aforementioned awkwardness. Review: Prepare to make delicious drinks and then spurt them out your nose all over your kitchen laughing at this naughty cocktail and awkward-social-situation survival guide. From intoxicated texting to threesomes to stalking your ex to realizing your child is an idiot, “How to Booze” provides you with aptly fitting cocktail recipes to deal with any scary situation without fear of judgment (from the authors, at least). Hey, any book that provides delicious cocktail recipes is a great book to us, but even better when it encourages cocktail consumption and mischief! About the Authors: Marshall Altier, a famed bartender with original recipes
featured in such reputable publications as New York Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle teams up with lawyer, writer and barware collector Jordan Kaye to create this debaucherous masterpiece.
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twitter: @howtobooze
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The Color Beer By Brian Yaeger author of Red, White, and Brew: An American Beer Odyssey
First and foremost, there is one primary way to discuss and grade a beer and that’s by how much you like it or don’t. Seriously, it’s either thumbs up, thumbs down or, if you’re wishy-washy, thumbs sideways.
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ut to really get down to the multifaceted ways of appreciating a beer, you can begin to smell for aromas ranging from earthy to spicy to toasty. You can size up its body based on a billowy head or the web-like lacing it leaves on the glass. You can turn into a math nerd and quantify numbers such as original or final gravity, which dictate its percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV) or how hoppy it is based on its international bitter units (IBU). But whereas all those factors build up to the beer’s overall character and, essentially, flavor, one characterization gets paid the shortest shrift: color.
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We’re not talking styles that tell you roughly what shade the ale is such as blondes, reds, pales, or brown ales, though it puts us
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on the right track. By this nomenclature, you’ll always know that, say, among wheat beers, a witbier (white beer) will be way lighter than a dunkelweizen (dark wheat). But that’s just the tip of the eisbock. Unless there are adjuncts that impart coloration such as red cherries or golden saffron or brown coffee, beer derives most of its color from the grains. Unmalted wheat makes a beer light such as a hefeweizen. The higher temperature barley is kilned at, the darker the tone, thereby resulting in beers from light lagers to pale and red ales that span all the colors of a setting sun. When you get into roasted barley, the results are darker and more opaque and used in dark beers like porters and stouts.
Standard Reference Method (SRM) is the
system that brewers use to measure how light or dark their brews are. It has generally replaced measuring color in degrees Lovibond (°L), at least used to describe the beer if not the malts that go into it. To get uber engineer-y, the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) define SRM thusly: “Beer color intensity on a sample free of turbidity and having the spectral characteristics of an average beer is 10 times the absorbance of the beer measured in a half-inch cell with monochromatic light at 430 nanometers.” So let’s not go there.
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n simple terms, a beer’s color using SRM can range from low to high and since it can never quite hit a watery zero, it will generally fall on the scale between 2 or 3 up to 40. Specifically, this puts Bud’s SRM at 2, Bass Pale Ale at 10, and Guinness at 40. Only drink local artisanal ales? Russian River’s Pliny the Elder Double IPA is approximately a 9 and Moonlight’s Death & Taxes Black Lager hits around 35. For all the beer geekery out there, it is quite possible to overhear patrons at a craft-centric
watering hole discussing a beer’s ABV or IBU, but you’ll never ever overhear them utter “SRM.” While we initially drink a pint in with our eyes, ultimately we don’t choose what to drink based on specific color (except for goobers who order “light” beer, who trend toward being the same numbskulls who shy away from “dark beer” misconstruing them as too heavy and caloric; newsflash—Death and Taxes and Guinness are comparatively light). When we do discuss beer color, it tends to bring out the poets in us. We might describe a Reissdorf Kölsch as the color of straw spun into gold, or Duchesse de Bourgogne as auburn as a paramour’s silky locks, or Old Rasputin Stout as being jet black like the bottom of a coal mine. As we look at our freshly poured beer now filling up a tulip glass or chalice, it’s like spotting an attractive person across the room before we get to know if they are fun or hilarious or kind. Ultimately our favorite aspects of beer lie in the floral or citrus-y hop aroma of a favorite IPA or the fruity esthers of a Belgian Dubbel or the coffee and chocolate-y kick of a robust Imperial Stout. As it goes with all objects of affection, appearances matter.
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Eat your booze
Honey Bourbon Roasted Chicken & Carrots
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Recipe & Photo by Denise Sakaki
his could have just as easily been called “Bourbon-Drunken Chicken,” but recipe titles should sound tempting and not like an all-night bender. However, this roasted chicken is truly drunk on whiskey, with an extra shot of flavor. The deep, oaky notes from a good bourbon whiskey, when combined with honey and ginger in a glaze that gets caramelized on chicken, creates a smoked, sweet flavor that perfumes the meat with the heady fragrance of the bourbon. It’s a simple, one pan weekday meal and a delicious way to make the other-other white meat more interesting. Makes four servings
Ingredients: Honey Bourbon Chicken: 1 medium-sized 4 to 5 pound chicken, parts separated, or get a chicken already broken down into its main pieces (2 breasts and 2 thighs). Leave skin on.
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Seasoned rub for Chicken: 2 tbsp. room-temperature butter 1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves, removed from the stem 1 tsp. kosher salt 1/2 tsp. fresh cracked pepper
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Honey Bourbon Glaze: 1/2 cup bourbon whiskey (Maker’s Mark is our household favorite) 2 tbsp. honey 1 tsp. finely minced fresh ginger Roasted Carrots: 1 lb. carrots (about 6 to 7 average sized ones), tops removed. Peeled and chopped into large bite-sized pieces. 2 tbsp. canola oil 1 tsp. kosher salt 1/2½ tsp. fresh cracked pepper Toss chopped carrots with oil, salt, and pepper and spread evenly across a baking sheet.
Prep Prepare the seasoned rub first, mixing the softened butter with the thyme, salt and pepper in a bowl, making a paste. Set aside. To prepare the glaze, put the honey in a bowl and microwave it for just a few seconds, to warm it slightly and make it easier to mix with the other ingredients. Add the whiskey and ginger, and stir until combined. Set aside and have a pastry brush handy for painting onto the chicken. If the chicken is cold, let it sit out for a few minutes to take the chill off, and pat dry with a paper towel. A dry, not-too-cold surface will be easier for seasonings to adhere to. Loosen the skin from the meat, so that there is enough room to slip fingers underneath and spread a bit of the butter between the skin and meat. Smear more of the seasoned butter on the surface of the chicken skin. Repeat across all four pieces of chicken.
Directions for both items: Preheat oven to 400°F. Place seasoned chicken pieces, skin-side up on the evenly-layered chopped carrots. The vegetables will act like a roasting rack, allowing heat to circulate around the pieces, and basting the carrots with flavor as the chicken cooks. Place baking sheet with carrots and chicken into the oven and let it roast for 5-10 minutes. After ten minutes, take out the tray and use a pastry brush to spread some of the bourbon honey glaze over the chicken skin. Place the tray back into oven – rotated to cook evenly. Repeat this process two to three times, every five to ten minutes. A layer of flavor will build on the chicken which should slowly start to brown. Cook the breast until it reaches 160°F and 170°F in the thighs (check with meat thermometer). Remove the pan from the oven for a final brushing of the glaze, and turn the broiler on. Broil the chicken for a few minutes (four to six, maximum), just to get the chicken’s skin to crisp and darken in color. Delicious when served with a small glass of bourbon.
Taming the White Dog Unaged Whiskey By M. Quinn Sweeney
White dog is a uniquely American tradition, which has begun its climb from the depths of scorn and obscurity to a place of cocktail prominence. Perhaps it’s our relative youth as a nation compared to that of other whiskeyproducing countries, but when I’ve spoken with Scottish distillers of bottling their whiskey straight from the still, they looked at me as though I had suggested photographing their grandmother naked, licking the sidewalk or kicking a puppy.
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hiskey, legally defined, is a spirit distilled from fermented grains (essentially beer) and aged in wooden barrels, usually for years. While neutral spirits like vodka are distilled over and over again to remove any trace of their base ingredients, whiskeys are distilled fewer times to preserve the tastes and aromas of impurities that add character and connection to the roots of the mash. White dog, also known as white lightning, white whiskey, or green whiskey, is the common term for whiskey that forgoes barrel aging, and so lacks the vanilla and caramel notes we expect.
Mixologist Bobby Heugel explains that “the grains used to produce the spirit are more noticeable, and the subtle flavors of these grains, usually hidden by the overbearing taste of oak, anchor the spirit’s bold, agricultural flavors.” Unaged whiskey has gotten a bad rap. Traditionally relegated to the dominion of hillbillies and moonshiners, it was believed by some to cause blindness with its harsh flavors and high proof. Until recently, your only opportunity to sample quality unaged whiskey would have been on a distillery tour, and most often only tasting one component of what would go into the final product, not the finished spirit straight before it goes into the barrel.
Doubled and Twisted may be the most fascinating example of the category, in both its story and flavor profile. At the Napa micro-distillery Charbay, Marko Karakasevic creates his light whiskey from a specially brewed India Pale Ale, believing that great beer is the foundation of great whiskey, which he distills twice in a copper pot still. Reduced to its bottle strength of 99 proof, Doubled and Twisted sits in oak barrels for only a single day before being aged in stainless steel tanks for three years to mellow the whiskey without the added color or flavor from the wood. It was Karakasevic’s “master’s thesis” and the culmination of his 26-year apprenticeship. As the thirteenth generation in a family of distillers and vintners, he was required to source, distill and bring to market a completely new spirit of quality equal to or better than his predecessors, and unlike other whiskeys, D&T retains distinct notes of beer, lending it malty richness and hopped flavor. On the day he met those criteria, his father slapped him on the back and said, “Congratulations, you’re a goddamn Master Distiller. Let’s drink some and smoke cigars.”
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any classic cocktail recipes are rooted in white dog’s prevalence during prohibition. The time and space required for barrel aging whiskey put renegade distillers at greater risk of being raided, so raw whiskey was common in the speakeasies. To temper the fire of the immature spirit, and often to cover off-putting flavors in poorly produced moonshine, bartenders got creative with recipes to make a more palatable drink like the Old Fashioned, which masked rough spirits with sugar, fruit and bitters.
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Despite being viewed by some as the Crystal Pepsi of spirits, a number of well-crafted white whiskeys are showing up in high-end liquor stores and are starting to gain recognition in cocktail bars around the nation. The initial surge came from micro-distilleries like Tuthilltown and Death’s Door, but there has been a response from prominent whiskey makers, including Buffalo Trace and Hirsch. Maker’s Mark has even teased with tastings of their
unaged distillate, but as of yet, is refusing to sell it in stores.
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On the modern mixology side, white dog has become enticing to bartenders for its unique properties. Traditional whiskey cocktails made with white dog can often be created with less of other ingredients because the overwhelming oaky flavors no longer compete. Bill Norris (the bar manager of FINO in Austin) points out that it can bring together the characteristics of both white and brown spirits. Its flexibility allows it to be used in whiskey cocktails or in drinks made with white spirits like gin and vodka. White dog isn’t yet readily available in all parts of the country, but if you come across a bottle in a respectable establishment, ask your barkeep to use it in a Manhattan, Sazerac or Whiskey Smash.
THE YELLOW LAB Courtesy of Bobby Heugel at Anvil Bar & Refuge in Houston 2 oz Buffalo Trace White Dog 1
barspoon turbinado simple syrup (2 parts turbinated sugar – available commercially as Sugar in the Raw –added to 1 part boiling water and allowed to cool)
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barspoon Luxardo Maraschino
2
dashes Truth Celery Bitters
Stir and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.
inside is the new outside
Enjoy Ploom Pods™ in six tobacco and herbal blends.
Ploom Inc. San Francisco, CA. Warning: Tobacco use may pose health risks.
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New Booze: Ransom
Ransom Old Tom Gin By Dominic Venegas
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esides the eye-catching apothecary bottle that takes you back to the wild west, Ransom Old Tom Gin is a beautiful spirit and great for making new cocktails. Ransom is a blend of two distillates that are combined to make a single batch that is then distilled one more time. One of the distillates is made from whiskey wort (think beer), while the other will be a neutral grain spirit infused with their blend of organic botanicals (which are found in most classic gins: juniper, orange peel, lemon peel, coriander seed, angelica root and cardamom pods). What is appealing and special about old tom gin is that it spends time in wood (Oregon Pinot Noir barrels). This softens it and adds some character to round out the finished gin. It also gives the gin its beautiful straw color. Ransom will surprise you with its great classic botanicals that lead to a nice robust finish of honey, and citrus peel with a touch of nutmeg. Bottled at an ABV of 88 proof (in small 50 case batches) it is ready to be mixed up, this is the whiskey lover’s old tom. It plays well with many spirits and can be used in many classics … my favorite is the Ransom Negroni. So if you see it grab it. And you may want to hold onto it for yourself. Or offer it up for ransom.
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Gay Bars A Historical Glimpse into
By Carolyn Gerin
What was stirred up in San Francisco through the middle of this century (in and out of the cocktail shaker) had profound effects on every facet of queer life across the globe. Fear of being “found out” in the early days helped create a close-knit community — many times forged in bars and taverns. San Francisco ‘safe houses’ were birthplace to a legendary drinking culture that extended far beyond the barstool, and, over time, formed into a cultural and political zeitgeist that tattooed the city of San Francisco into a colorful leader in gay lifestyle. The next time someone tells you that hanging out in bars won’t get you anywhere, think again. The Beginning
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ome of the earliest roots of lesbian and gay bar culture can be traced to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance in the ’20s — home of the Cotton Club, the Drool Inn, and Hot Feet, where people could embrace rebel-sexuality, gender identification and refuge. Carefree flapper and “new woman” culture (ebullient having won the right to vote) also gave straight and bisexual women license to enjoy the fruits of the permissive attitudes of the time. Middle-class malaise gave way to free sexual expression and permission to explore downtown, counter-cultural adventures.
Artwork by Tanja Tröster
:
Culture and Politics Served in a Glass
during the 1939 World’s Fair, touted by the tourist magazines as “America’s Most Unusual Nightclub.” The police (and the press) may not have bothered to check the facts: “finocchio,” Italian Anyone who’s ever for fennel, is also seen the film Milk a negative slang or traveled to San word for gay. With Francisco probably strip tease acts in believes that the gorilla suits, drag Castro was the birthshows and deplace of the first gay bauchery six nights a week, Finocchio’s bar. But they actually didn’t pop up in the was so popular neighborhood until that the military made them sign an 1963, according to Bill agreement to limit Lipsky, a historian and board member with liquor sales during the Gay Lesbian Bicertain hours to sexual Transgenderservicemen. Closed Historical Society. in 1999 due to a major rent increase, Finocchio’s was legendary and brought in a crowd with the likes of Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, and Bette Davis.
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inocchio’s wasn’t the only bar of that time pushing the limits of gender, sexuality and equality. The Black Cat, circa 1933, offered another flavor of entertainment via waiterturned-showgirl Jose Sarria, who dared to take it up a notch. Sarria performed for years as Madam Butterfly, Empress Jose, and the Widow Norton, preaching gay rights in his shows and crossing every social current. The Beats, gays, and even high society attended shows. In 1949, Sol Stoumen, the straight man who owned the Black Cat, faced down a police attempt to close the bar on the grounds that it attracted gay people. The Supreme Court ruled that a bar could not be closed simply due to the clients it attracted. Sarria went on to make even more history as the first gay man to run
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Photos courtesy of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.
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n the other coast, in neighborhoods like North Beach and Telegraph Hill, bastions of the Beats, were also gay men, lesbians, sailors, prostitutes, and tourists on erotic holidays, melting into communities that can only be described as eclectic. San Francisco became the new home to thousands of servicemen discharged from the armed forces in the ’40s for “engaging in homosexual or other perverse sexual practices.” These servicemen stayed in the Bay Area with time and money to burn in the gay bars and taverns of prosperous, wartime San Francisco. Going back home to the closeted straight life didn’t sound very appealing when they had the option of living openly in San Francisco with its gorgeous weather and vibrant nightlife. San Francisco was a haven replete with possibilities. Gay-curious tourists who may have played it straight back in Omaha let loose in North Beach bars, bringing home the sort of memories that may not have sat well with their bosses. The Beat Movement, with ringleaders Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, made it hip for other bohemians, writers and artist types to find themselves in the North Beach and Telegraph Hill bar scene. In 1936, Finocchio’s was opened. It was a bar with glamorous, costumed performers – men performing as women. Joe Finocchio was inspired by a customer at his father’s speakeasy who used to perform a female impersonation of songstress Sophie Tucker. Although Finocchio’s bar was successful, local police cracked down on female impersonators, revoking the bar’s license. They reopened on Broadway with an open door policy toward performers; the only criteria was to be sexy and entertaining in either genre (flamenco and hula dancing), and dead-on in impersonations. The club became a major tourist attraction, garnering national attention
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Photos courtesy of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.
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for the Board of Supervisors in 1961.
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The hot spot for so-called “odd girls” was Mona’s 440 where, as the advertisements read, “girls will be boys.” Today, San Francisco has its share of drag queen luminaries, but in North Beach in the ’50s it was all about male impersonators such as Gladys Bentley and Kay Scott and their coterie of pin-up-worthy girlfriends filling the booths and ordering up stiff ones. Bentley dressed like a dapper dandy in a top hat and tux, flirting shamelessly to a smitten, all-women audience and “reinterpreting” popular tunes with highly sexualized lyrics. North Beach and Telegraph Hill are widely considered to be SF’s first lesbian neighborhoods, and during the ’50s there were several hot spots within spit-
ting distance that catered to “odd girls.” The original Tommy’s Joynt was owned by Tommy Vasu, the first known lesbian to legally run a bar in San Francisco. Dick Boyd, author of Broadway North Beach: The Golden Years, points out that, “men had to front for lesbians in bars and clubs in order to get the approval of the Board of Equalization for their liquor license,” which was the case with Mona’s in the late 1930s.
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he drinking clientele for the bars and taverns had originally been blue collar, and as this population shrank, so did the profit. The Tavern Guild of San Francisco, formed in 1962, was the first gay business association in the country, protecting establishments
such as the Suzy-Q Bar, where leader Phil Donganiero served up drinks and a few sage quotes: “…The improved image takes the gay bar out of the class of a resort for social rejects, and establishes it as a social and recreational center that has a proper place in urban life,” he said. This “permits the bars and clubs the opportunity of being social centers for our people, with wholesome and safe atmosphere… [and] a stronger front from a united ‘Gay Community.’”
The Revolution Darker moments in gay bar history changed our worldview of gay rights and became turning points and watershed moments for social change: The infamous Stonewall Inn incident, June 28, 1969, when police harassed habitués of the tavern on Christopher Street in NYC for “violation of liquor laws.” There was no turning back: gay patrons retaliated by openly protesting
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rotecting bar owners and bartenders from police raids and shakedowns, raising the image of
gay taverns, and bringing them out of the shadows was the goal, and it worked. Over time, the Tavern Guild became a philanthropic organization and host of the infamous Beaux Arts Ball.
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and throwing objects back at the police. The rebellion boiled over and the battle grew over a series of nights with hundreds of protesters. The Daily News reported that the incident, now gaining international buzz, For years, the had “all the fury of a gay atomic specialty cocktail bomb.” at Harvey’s has been the Bloody Ten years later, Dan White’s Maria Callas, a lenient sentencing for the shootblend of vodka, ing and murder of Harvey Milk tequila, brandy kicked off a gay protest riot. The and a spicy, “White Night Riots,” on May house-made, 21, 1979, were started at the tomato mixer. Civic Center in San Francisco The Harvey Milk and culminated at the Elephant Mai Tai is also a Walk bar in the Castro. Police favorite. descended on the Castro, injured dozens of gay activists, destroyed property, threatened patrons, and practically destroyed the bar. The owners sued the City of San Francisco and won in a landmark decision. The Elephant Walk has now become Harvey’s in deference to the “Mayor of Castro Street,” as he was lovingly known.
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t was not so long ago that gay bars were some of the only places where people could congregate without discrimination. Guys could throw on a dress, girls could throw on a suit, and bohemians could add to the mix. A big part of what we see today in queer rights, media, and culture, resulted from the simple act of pulling up a bar stool ordering a drink, and starting a conversation. Today, we continue to toast to our history, to Harvey Milk, to a bright future and to the right to marry It’s history in the making, once again, in a bar somewhere in the city. Special Thanks: Paul Boneberg, Director, & Bill Lipsky, Board Member - Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society of San Francisco. www.glbthistoricalsociety.org. Carolyn Gerin created the Anti-Bride series for Chronicle books, a bestselling 3-book series that created the pop cultural space for the alterna-bridal market. She serves as Sr. Editor for Destination I Do Magazine, the top destination wedding, romance travel magazine in the world. www.antibride.com, www.destinationidomag.com
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Beyond Red & White: Pink, Orange, Yellow and Blue By Gus Vahlkamp
As a sommelier, most of the time if I’ve done my job correctly, no one will even notice, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Anonymity preserves my dignity, and sanity. Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy my work, or that there is no satisfaction within it to be had. The truth is quite the contrary – otherwise I would not have been able to do it for twenty-odd years. And believe me, some of the years have been really odd. Following are some colorful foods for thought, apropos of nothing and mostly opinions presented as fact, about what to drink, or not. Since this issue of Drink Me is devoted to colors…
Red wine is, for genuine lack of
White wine is what you should drink most of the time. Normally I’m not given to quoting other wine service professionals (not because they aren’t clever; I just can’t remember what they say), but my colleague David Lynch, currently the wine director at Quince in San Francisco, once published a short list of Wine Maxims, one of which I’m fond of citing: “People who won’t drink white wine as a rule aren’t to be trusted in matters of taste.” Truer words were never written, at least about wine. Red wine goes with meat and some poultry dishes, when they are served warm; white wine goes with everything else. And, while I myself am more likely to
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a better description, obvious. It is the lone elephant at a tea party for field mice. While some of the finest and most expensive wines produced on the planet are red, the market is generally awash in a fathomless ocean of cheaply produced, over-hyped, overripe, over-oaked, red wine that doesn’t taste good and will effectively ruin any meal with which it’s served. And yet, so many Americans who think of themselves as wine drinkers only drink red wine, even in combination with food that actually tastes bad when paired with it: oysters, for example, or sweet, spicy Asian dishes. Having witnessed it many times in restaurant service, I offer honestly that a goodly number of American men drink
red wine exclusively to be manly. I’ve often wondered if those guys, when they get home from work and slip into something a little more comfortable, don’t crack open a dainty, floral sauvignon blanc to sip on while they exfoliate.
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order a beer or a well-made cocktail as an aperitif, the only wines that I can endorse in that exigency are white (specifically young, unoaked styles with high acidity and an abundance of primary fruit character). Such wines are pleasant, refreshing, and will stimulate the appetite; in a word, they’re drinkable by themselves. So drink more white wine, and be trusted in matters of taste.
And here in California, Edmunds St. John makes an outstanding Gamay rose from El Dorado County that is tasty and dirt-cheap, LIOCO’s excellent 2009 Indica rose from Mendocino County is about to be released, and Robert Sinskey continues to offer his consistently lovely vin gris of Pinot Noir. And if I’m ever born again – again – I will be baptized in the ethereal, barely pink Messwein (“altar wine”) from Stift Goettweig in Austria. Though frankly I wouldn’t want to be part of any organized religion that would have me.
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Orange wine is made by fer-
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menting white wines with their skins and other grape solids. The production of orange wine is an old world tradi-
Photo by Donald Gruener
Pink wine is here to recruit you. With apologies to Sutter Home and Beringer, the era of white zinfandel is officially over. The quantity of affordable, high-quality, interesting, pink wine from all over the world has never been greater or more available to the American wine drinker. If you’ve yet to discover the simple joy of downing a bottle of chilled rose, outside on a clear, sunny, spring day with good company and a sandwich or two, then you should hightail it to the nearest wine merchant, get yourself a bottle or two, and hurry up and relax. Southern France, Spain, Italy and Austria all export an ocean of pink wine to the United States that is well worth diving into.
tion that comes from northeastern Italy, Croatia, and Slovenia, but has become popular among a handful of Californian vintners in recent years. Depending on what grape varieties are used to make them, they can range in style from fruity and aromatic to lushly textured, smoky and phenolic. In a good vintage, their aging potential can extend upwards of four decades. Movia and Radikon, both located in Friuli on the border of Italy and Slovenia, are the two most common European producers of orange wine that can be found in the U.S., although the wines are rare and not inexpensive. Closer to home, the Natural Process Alliance makes skin-fermented Chardonnay and Pinot Gris from Sonoma County fruit; Wind Gap makes an orange Pinot Gris, also from Sonoma; and Chris Brockway at Broc Cellars makes an outstanding Roussanne that undergoes 18 days of skin fermentation. Ostensibly, orange wines are white wines that have been treated like red, with extended skin contact and longer
bottle aging. The wines can be difficult to locate, but they are quite rewarding to drink, if only because they are so far outside the parameters of what we think white wine is or should be.
Yellow wine (or vin jaune) is
another old-world beverage, but not one yet replicated commercially in the U.S. Its production is limited to a small area called the Jura, in the hills of eastern France. It is a partially oxidized wine, like fino sherry, but it isn’t fortified like its Spanish counterpart. It is vinified from late- harvested Savagnin (a thick-skinned, tannic member of the Traminer family of grapes), and aged by law in small, old oak barrels for nearly seven years before it is bottled. The barrels are porous, and as the wine inside evaporates and isn’t replaced, a thin film of bacteria grows on the surface of the wine in the barrel’s headspace. The Spanish call it flor, the French call it voile, but the bacteria is the key to the process: it allows the slow partial oxidation to occur inside the barrel and gives the wine its characteristic nuttiness. Vin jaune is doubtless an acquired taste since, like orange wine, its limited and laborious production makes it difficult to find. In the Jura, it is mostly commonly served with slow-cooked chicken dishes and with Franche-Comte, the region’s deliciously ubiquitous cheese. And if you should ever find yourself anywhere near the Jura in early February, don’t miss La Percee du Vin Jaune, the annual release festival that is held in a different village every year. You’ll probably never again have a chance to get stark raving schnockered on vin jaune with 30,000 Frenchmen in the dead of winter.
My experience with blaufrankisch has always been pleasant, if mostly inoffensive, but lately a number of producers have taken pains to create substantial and even elegant wines from it, including but not limited to Walter Glatzer, Weingut Wenzel, and Moric. At its best, it is reminiscent of fine Gamay or Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley – aromatically mineral, with a balance of fruit and floral notes, attractive and simple. Oak aging does little for it, although Moric does produce a reserve bottling that sees some new wood, and thus needs several years before it comes around. Blaufrankisch makes a fine weekday wine, and is generally priced as such. Fundamentally, I want you to drink wine – any wine, anytime, anywhere. Everyone should drink more wine, for the plain fact that it is one of the simplest and most honest rewards that someone can enjoy. You shouldn’t drink it because you saw a thing on 60 Minutes about the abnormally low incidence of heart disease amongst chain smoking, croissant-swallowing, wine-swilling, philandering Frenchmen. Drink it because you like it, or because you’re learning to like it. At the least, we’ll have something to talk about. Wine isn’t medicine. It’s food.
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Blue wine is from Austria, so we’ll call it blau. Blaufrankisch, literally “blue French” (so called because people er-
roneously believed it was cabernet franc; it isn’t), is a grape variety indigenous to Austria that is currently gaining favor among wine lovers both for its expressive character and its affordability. The wine itself isn’t blue, but the grapes on the vine assume a tinge of it as they ripen. One of the positive side effects of global climate change – maybe the only one – is that it has become easier to ripen red grapes in places like Germany and Austria, where the focus has traditionally and necessarily been on white wines.
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Hard Times for the Hard-Shelled:
How a centuries-old fleet of bugs lost their jobs creating the color of your Campari By Ken Walczak “[C]ochineal was the fundamental base of the color red … as tough and durable as the stained glass that one sees in the churches, it can preserve its color for entire centuries, without changing.” -A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire.
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hen sipping spirits to soothe or to celebrate, many drinkers prefer bitter flavors. Such drinkers savor amari, the potent Italian liqueurs taken at the end of a meal to aid digestion and reflection. For a century and a half, the lustrous red Campari has been the most famous amaro. Traditionally, Campari took its signature red from the backs of a peculiar allfemale labor force, the South American cochineal insect. The cochineal and the carmine dye it produces have nurtured colonial empires, industrial manufacturing, and cocktail culture for centuries. Most recently, the noble insect has fallen victim to a familiar fate: Campari’s cochineals are out of a job.
Of course, the bugs are doing their best to stay busy. In Peru, millions of them awaken to the prospect of a long, hard day nesting on the fronds of the prickly pear, or nopal cactus. Their habitat bore them the name nochezli, or “blood of the nopal” in ancient Aztec. Later, Spanish invaders dubbed them cochinilla (possibly from the Latin coccus, for “scarlet dye,” but literally “little pig,” and the name given to a similar-looking woodlouse). Campari’s erstwhile employee, the female cochineal, is basically housebound. She has no wings, and spends her day sucking nourishment from the host cactus. If challenged, she excretes the brilliant blood-red carminic acid to defend herself. On the other hand, the male cochineal has wings, which both alleviate the need for acid-shooting and create a sexual double standard. Each male flits from frond to frond, attending to a harem of
300 females. Pregnant, the females’ backs fill with eggs, causing them to swell.
In better times, a farmer (an Aztec, a conquistador, or a contractor for Gruppo Campari) would remove the egg-swollen, acid-rich females to be killed, dried, and crushed. Processing the powdered insect bodies (by boiling them in ammonia or sodium carbonate solution, then filtering and adding alum) results in the purified coloring known simply as “carmine.”
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armine and cochineal added color to the world for centuries before a bartender poured the first Negroni. Aztec doctors mixed ground cochineal with vinegar, as a poultice for wounds. Aztec cuisine featured cochineal tamales. Aztec prostitutes lured potential customers by smearing their breasts and teeth with it. Colonial Spain reaped massive profits for centuries by selling cochineal for use in dye-making, cosmetics, and medicines. Louis XIV covered the walls and armchairs of Versailles with cochineal-dyed tapestries, and hung cochinealcolored curtains around 435 palace beds. Nineteenth-century English physicians prescribed one of the first cochineal-dyed cocktails: mix cochineal, cream of tartar, and Venetian soap. Shake or stir. Sip three times a day, to relieve jaundice.
Using St. John’s Blood,” a dye made from the “Polish cochineal” (a similar insect), Russian and Polish apothecaries colored folk medicines and homebrewed vodkas. Because carmine is more potent, more permanent, and more brilliantly colored than “St. John’s Blood,” it eclipsed kermes as the go-to dye for nearly every imaginable European foodstuff.
Presumably, the cochineals back in Peru enjoyed full employment during these boom times, comprising the first 147 years of Campari’s existence. Campari drinkers in 1915 or 1995 received the same medicinal benefits from carmine that accrued to the jaundiced Britons and the Aztec tamale-eaters of antiquity. But in 2005, the phrase “contains carmine” abruptly disappeared from Campari’s English label, replaced by “artificially colored.” All Campari in North America was carmine-free by 2006. Peru’s cochineals hit the insect unemployment line en masse. The reasons for Campari’s sudden reduction in bug-labor have spurred copious debate. Some suggest that Gruppo Campari feared pressure from vegans and vegetarians, who avoid insect-colored products. Others cited rare, but severe, allergic reactions to cochineal. Perhaps most fittingly, some speculate that in a world of cheap chemical additives, it finally became too costly for Campari to import the natural dye prized by the court of Louis XIV. Asked to comment for this article, Dave Karraker, director of public relations for Skyy Spirits (Campari’s American importer) laid the blame for the formula change at the tiny feet of his former employees. Insinuating that cochineal bugs cannot be trusted to produce consistent results, Mr. Karraker wrote that Campari
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It was only natural that Gaspare Campari would choose carmine as the primary coloring in the amaro he concocted from
herbs, spices, barks, and fruit peels in Novara, Italy, in 1860. The distinctive carmine hue gave Mr. Campari’s bitters an appealing look and created an immediate association in the drinker with fine tapestries, European palaces, and royal clothing. Like the Spanish traders stumbling into nopalry centuries before, Campari became wildly successful.
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began using artificial color due “to uncertainty in supply of carmine.” Campari devotees and other cocktail aficionados are less concerned about the plight of flightless insect workers. For them, only one question matters: does “new” (post-2006) Campari taste any different from “old” (pre-2006) Campari?
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cott Baird, manager of San Francisco’s 15 Romolo, says that new Campari tastes different. “No one, in my early bartending career, would have told you that Campari imparted any sweetness,” he says. But now they do. Accordingly, Mr. Baird speculates that in 2006, Campari upped the sugar content to balance out the bitterness. But he also acknowledges that his customers’ perception of sweetness changes as they become more cocktail savvy, and that, as a Campari fan himself, it’s easy to fall victim to “romantic and colored opinion about the product.” (I did not ask Mr. Baird whether he intended the pun.)
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Erik Adkins managed the bar at San Francisco’s Slanted Door in 2007 (he now runs the cocktail program at Heaven’s Dog). When his inventory briefly contained both old and new Campari, his staff tasted them side-by-side. Said Mr. Adkins: “We all uniformly agreed [the new stuff ] had a different flavor profile.” Where the 2005 Campari was dryer, Mr. Adkins says the 2007 formulation seemed rounder, simpler, less complex.
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Meanwhile, as concerns about artificial colorants and other chemical additives proliferate, there are reports of a “cochineal renaissance” among food producers. And in an interesting twist, Mr. Karraker reports that Campari producers “in Brazil, some South American markets and a few other small markets still use carmine because of differing local legal standards regarding coloring extracts.”
It is not hard to imagine enterprising mixologists returning from Brazilian vacations with a bottle of carmine-colored Campari for side-by-side comparison with its artificially colored successor. “Brazilian Campari” could be the new “Mexican Coke.” On the other hand, there is something to be said for preserving the mystery. A little uncertainty with one’s Negroni seems appropriate, given the cochineal insect’s historical ability to spark debate. For centuries, people have engaged in spirited cocktail conversation over everything from the medical effects of carmine dye to the ethics of consuming crushed insect shells. Now we can add at least two topics to that list: the flavor profile of bug juice, and the economic impact of several million unemployed, promiscuous South American insects.
Negroni
1 oz. Campari 1 oz. gin 1 oz. sweet vermouth orange wheel, for garnish Technique: Fill an Old Fashioned glass with ice. Pour the Campari, Gin, and Sweet Vermouth over the ice. Stir briefly, garnish with an orange wheel.
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Websites to Drink to
compilation of the best boozy blogs and colorful cocktails galore! Liqurious takes user submissions for interesting alcoholrelated blog posts and best cocktail recipes and compiles them on a single website. Featured blogs include a post highlighting beautiful sake barrel packaging, a whiskey-infused donut recipe, and a plate designed to hold both your food and your beer with one hand. And don’t forget their drink recipes! These drinks look so good they’ll make your eyes drool, and (liq)curious to try them.
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.....walks into a bar Charles Dickens walks into a bar and orders a martini. The bartender asks, “Olive or twist?” This is a QR code. You can scan it with your smart phone and link directly to us. Want to find out more? Check out www.tigtags.com/ getqr
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Libation Laureate
After Hours by Ale Gasso
The comedian and his drink dark and smiling collaborate at the bar–
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elixir of
life •••••
rings around an improvised joke those ever-steadying hands half-closed eyes 7.75" that crooked smile.
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Leprechauns Aside: Green Beer By Corey Hill (Globalexchange.org)
Mention “green beer” and the first thing that comes to mind is likely a garish concoction sloshing over the rim of a giant plastic cup, watery beer slurred with food coloring, a vague memory of a questionable libation accompanied by visions of questionable acts you committed on that notorious day in March.
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ut let’s rethink the term. Green doesn’t have to be artificial – think recycling, biking to work, and turning off the lights when you’re not in the bathroom. Green living is bubbling to the forefront of our collective consciousness, and unfortunately for concerned beer lovers, a great deal about beer is bad for the environment. In fact, studies estimate that a single six-pack of beer produces over six pounds of carbon dioxide emissions in its life cycle. Six pounds, for purposes of comparison, is a small dog, or an exceptionally large guinea pig. Whichever mammal, that’s a lot of carbon.
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Every step of the process is marred by environmental hazards. Grains (both the starch source and hops) are sprayed with petroleum-based pesticides and harvested by oil fed machines. Once the grains hit the brewery, every machine inside the
building sucks up juice, and a lot of it. In the United States, fifty percent of that electricity is generated by burning coal. Then there is the little problem of wastewater: the typical brewery produces between two and six gallons (a large kitchen sink) of wastewater for every gallon of beer produced. Throw in disposable packaging, and a distribution system reliant on oil-driven trucks, and you can see why your average beer is a strain on the ecosystem. I’m troubled. I like the ozone layer as much as the next person, and I certainly don’t want to see it eviscerated just to satiate my powerful lust for pilsners and lagers. But I also don’t want to live on a planet without beer. So you see the conundrum.
Thankfully, solutions are forthcoming. Clever thinkers, with a mind for both the palette and the planet, have crafted the answers that make it possible to reconcile a love of all things beer with a love of living on an Earth that is inhabitable to humans. Certified organic growing techniques for hops and barley make for a pesticidefree product, because strict regulations ensure a sustainable harvest. The North American Organic Brewers Festival, billed as the largest event of its kind in the world, boasts more than forty brewers in its lineup – a good cross-section of a rapidly growing sector of the market. What’s more, many brewers source local ingredients which, aside from avoiding petroleum-based pesticides, also cut down on the distance the hops and barley travel before being processed. Good news, glaciers.
Foster Brewing Company of Australia uses a microbial fuel cell—basically a battery in which bacteria munch on water-soluble brewing wastes like sugar and starch—to stay green. The fuel cell converts the chemical energy produced by the feeding bacteria into electrical energy.
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pent grains don’t just make electricity, either. They also make happy cows. Though stovepipe hats and territorial disputes with Great Britain are now vanished fixtures of life from the 1800s, there is another 19th century tradition that is coming back to the fore: feeding spent grains to livestock. Operations of all sizes, from tiny Brooklyn Brewery in New York to Colorado giant Coors, are making money by selling spent grains to farmers. Grains in cow stomachs are kept out of wastewater. Once the beer’s made, it’s gotta go somewhere. And usually that somewhere is into a bottle or can, and then into a box or case. Moving forward from recycled packaging, a radical idea has emerged: no packaging. Not only that, but no trucks. No packing plus no trucks equals zero emissions. A simple enough formula—and that’s exactly what several breweries are doing. In Chicago, Goose Island Brewery makes a local only, draft
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And as for electrical needs, brewers are at the forefront of the alternative energy game, ditching coal in favor of cleaner options. In fact, when New Belgium Brewery decided to power their brewery completely by wind in 1999, they became the world’s largest single consumer of wind power (at the time) and the first brewery to be completely wind powered. They got buy-in from the whole staff, too. Even though they knew it would cut into their profits, the entire team voted ‘yes’ on wind power.
Other companies have since followed suit, adopting a clean mixture of solar, wind, and water power to meet the energy needs of their facilities. And as for that wastewater clogging up municipal water treatment systems, well, there’s a solution for that now, too. Methane capture—the process by which organic matter in wastewater is converted to methane, which is then burned to release electricity—is fast becoming a popular choice for brewers hoping to save money and supplement their energy needs.
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only beer that is only available in Chicago (hence the term ‘local only’). If you’re not in Chicago, and you’re not at a pub, you can’t get it. Chicago locavores rejoice! Everyone else, remember this next time you’re in Chicago.
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long those same lines…why not bring your own container to fill up when it’s time for beer? Enter the growler, a half gallon glass container that has been around in one form or another for thousands of years. Show up with an empty growler, leave with a full one, and you remove the need for landfill-clogging packaging and ozone-shredding transport. Driven by an interest in sustainability and locally sourced products (and good, cheap beer), the idea is gaining traction in cities with well-developed beer cultures. The only stumbling blocks preventing a wider acceptance of growlers are liquor laws, which vary widely by city, county, and state. Here in the Bay Area, the issue is a little tricky, but you can find bars and breweries that deal in growlers if you’re willing to do a little research (Pssst: You can get growlers of delicious beer in San Francisco at Magnolia Pub and the Beach Chalet). If ever there was a reason to get active in politics, agitating for greater acceptance of growlers is it. From now on, I’m going to be doing a color check on all the beer I drink. With every shade available, there’s no reason it can’t be green, all year round. Plastic cups and clovers optional.
Recipes Del Rio
by The Bon Vivants
1.5 oz Tequila Ocho Plata, or another quality highland tequila .75 oz St Germain Elderflower Liqueur .5 oz Fino Sherry (dry), we like the Lustau Jarana dash Angostura Orange Bitters Technique: Chill a martini glass, add ingredients to mixing glass, stir. Strain into glass. Garnish: A nickle sized disk of grapefruit skin, having zested the oils over the drink before dropping in.
Black Acai Punch
by Robert J Ferrara (People’s choice recipe) 3 Blackberries 1/2 oz Basil syrup (simple syrup infused with fresh basil. Pureed, then strained) 1/2 oz Fresh squeezed lime juice 1 1/2 oz VeeV Açaí liqueur 1/2 oz Michter’s Rye Technique: 1. Muddle 2 blackberries, Basil syrup and lime juice together. 2. Add the VeeV Açaí liqueur and rye. 3. Add ice, shake for 15-20 seconds. Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Garnish: 1 blackberry Our own cocktail contest continues in each issue! The ingredient to use in this month’s contest is Tres Agaves Tequila of your choosing. We want to hear your original recipes! Send in your original recipe to recipes@drinkmemag.com.Check back on the website to vote for your favorites! The winning cocktail will be featured in the next issue.
Spicy. Unexpected. Full of potential. Just like your plans tonight.
Good Luck.
®
Basil Hayden’s® Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 40% Alc./Vol. ©2010 Kentucky Springs Distilling Co., Clermont, KY.