I bookmarked this cocktail recipe a few weeks ago — I can’t remember if I found it via Liqurious or Serious Eats — but it’s ultimately courtesy of Olga at Mango & Tomato, a great foodie blog featuring original recipes and restaurant reviews from Olga’s adventures in food-tourism.

Much like Olga confesses in her post, as a kid I was more likely to spring for a glass of tomato juice or V8 (seasoned with a ridiculous amount of black pepper) than a milk shake or soda.

Unfortunately, really awesome Bloody Marys are hard to come by. I tend to hate pre-maid mixes, and usually “fresh” ones consist of little beyond ice, tomato juice, rail vodka, and a sad stalk of celery.

This one, Naked Jay Vodka’s “Slippery Tomato”, sounds awesome though:

Your tax dollars (disguised as grant money) at work:

According to Time Magazine, some brilliant psychologists in England requiring one more flimsy published study to secure tenure have concluded that some wine drinkers may perceive whatever they’re drinking as better or worse depending on what music is playing while they’re doing so.

So if you hate the band Disturbed (warning: not suitable for listening to. Ever.) and that friend of yours throws them on as part of their dinner party soundtrack in an attempt to be ironic, you may find the wine less tasty than if there was something more appropriately-ignore-able (think “sad Starbucks compilation CD”) playing in the background.

Of course, that sour taste in your mouth (TWSS?) could be because even the finest wine ever fermented tastes like shit when you’re chugging it in an effort to flee said dinner party and forget that you ever knew the host(s).

Thanks, Science. Now where’s my f@#king hoverboard?!!

When it comes to cocktails, Fall is a great season for drinking them. Cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin, apple—it’s all just so delicious!

In the spirit of the season, I present to you Pumpkin Punch w/ Cinnamon-Infused Rum, courtesy of Kelly Carámbula and Serious Eats.

Ingredients:

For the cinnamon infused rum:

1 750-mL bottle of dark rum, like Flor de Caña, Gosling’s Black Seal, or Myer’s Dark
3 cinnamon sticks

For the punch:

10 ounces pumpkin purée
10 ounces cinnamon-infused rum
10 ounces sweetened condensed milk (vegan? Just melt some vanilla soy ice cream—but not that Soy Delicious Coconut Milk stuff. The coconut flavor will overpower the delicacy of the pumpkin)
10 dashes Angostura bitters (seems a bit excessive, but keep in mind it’s for an entire punch bowl)
Freshly ground nutmeg (for real—fresh nutmeg is not that expensive, and you can totally tell the difference)
Ice block or cubes

To Make:

Infused rum: Combine the cinnamon sticks and rum (keeping the rum bottle) in a large ball jar (or any wide-mouthed jar.) Seal and place in a dark area for 3 days, gently shaking daily. Once the cinnamon flavor is bold enough, remove the cinnamon sticks and pour back into the liquor bottle.

In a large punch bowl, combine the pumpkin purée, rum, condensed milk and bitters. Gently stir until fully combined.

Sprinkle freshly-grated nutmeg over the entire punch bowl.

(Check out Kelly’s blog Eat. Make. Read. for more of her recipes!)

Serious Eats recently profiled Jim Meehan of NYC speakeasy-era bar PDT for his selection of artisanal apple-themed cocktails, and the one I’m most desperate to try out myself is the Nouveau Sangaree. The combination of red wine, apple brandy, sloe gin and maple syrup really gets my taste buds going! Plus, it just looks awesome with the cinnamon-sprinkled apple slice garnish:)

Ingredients:

Admit it: you’ve always wished there was a slightly more convenient, less-liquid-y way to consume your alcohol. Or maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, thank goodness for Camper English, the L.A. Times’ resident booze guru and acclaimed inventor of the Honey Badger shot. He had the same idea, and has been researching and developing the best methods by which to create solid forms of our favorite adult beverages. However, his (thus far) favorite method was actually passed on to him by Lauren Mote, the mixology half of Kale & Nori Culinary Arts, a Vancouver-based catering service. Click here to get the details at Camper’s Alcademics blog, but it basically centers around boiling down spirits to reduce the amount of water, and then agitating the resulting syrup until it begins to crystallize into a very adult-friendly form of rock candy. Once the syrup has been turned out onto a silicone mat and cools, just break it up into rocks and pulverize it in the spice grinder of your choice for a powdery libation, a la these campari crystals:

I’ve got two words for you: FUN. DIP.

(Pic & “recipe” via Alcademics)

Recent Medal of Honor recipient USMC Sgt. Dakota Meyer (Ret.) just had one request when he went to pick up his hardware at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: dude wanted a beer with the prez.

Fair enough; I’d probably make the exact same request, and despite some push-back from certain citizens that think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect the person with the HARDEST JOB IN THE WORLD* to remain tee-total for 4 to 8 years, I don’t think it’s a particularly unusual request.

*Seriously, if I was the President of the United States, I think I’d have to be baseline buzzed 24/7 just to motivate myself to get out of bed in the morning and deal with Congressional ass-clowns all day—from BOTH parties.

But the most amazing part of this story is the revelation that they were drinking Barack’s House-brewed beer—in this instance a couple bottles of “White House Honey Ale”. Delicious!

According to CBS News, the Obamas bought brewery hardware and had it installed in the White House (on their own dime, so fear not, tax-payers) and officially became the first First Family to brew its own beer IN the White House. How baller is that?!

This actually happened:

Moose saunters out of the woods on the outskirts of Särö, Sweden, finds some rotten apples at the base of a tree, proceeds to get blasted on the fermented (and therefore alcoholic) fruit, and gets stuck in the tree while climbing in search of more hooch. Rescue workers were called in, and were able to free the be-hooved lush. He then promptly collapsed to the ground to sleep it off, and was seen stumbling off in the morning with what I can only assume was a brutal hangover.

My first thought when I read this? “Hahahaha, animals can be so dumb!”

And then I remembered the storied list of places in which I have passed out drunk:

• Bathroom floor
• Hotel hallway
• Drunk tank (yes, in a real, actual jail, in a really uncomfortable chair, next to a really smelly drunk who kept elbowing me all night because he was shaking with the DT’s so badly)
• Stairwells
• Bathtub

I guarantee you there are others, but that’s the fun of getting blackout drunk—memory loss! A less-optimistic person might find that…depressing? But I like to think of it more like time travel!

(Via Daily Picks and Flicks)

Well, sort of. It’s hanging on by a thread in the mid-Atlantic, what with the hurricane-level showers we’ve been dealing with the last few weeks.

But I just got one year older today, I wore a hoodie for the first time in months, and Dogfish Head’s Punk’n Ale is finally in my tummy again. So it feels Fall-y. Decline-y. Dying-y.

But Karen at Tasty Trials offered up this last gasp of summery deliciousness recently—the Raspberry Limoncello cocktail:

To make:

Muddle lemon, basil, raspberries in a glass, until raspberries and lemon are well mashed. Fill glass with ice. Add limoncello, vodka and sugar (if using). Stir. Top with champagne.

Drink up! I doubt there will be a post tomorrow, as I’m leaving ass-early in the morning for Chicago to sling my wares at Renegade Handmade this weekend, so have a fun one, and if you’re gonna be in Chicago, swing by Wicker Park (Division St. side) to say hi!

(Photo & cocktail courtesy of Karen at Tasty Trials)

This isn’t really news, but back in July the Rickey was declared the official cocktail of Washington, DC. Which is funny, because I feel that to live and work in the nation’s capital or root for their sports teams, I’d need way more than one cocktail to keep me sane (I should know; I’m a big ‘Skins fan). The good news is that the Rickey is a pretty basic drink that lends itself to a fair amount of variation. While I doubt I’d be a fan of the original “Joe” Rickey that uses bourbon in lieu of gin, I do like me some gin. So I scoured the webz for something awesome, and there is not much in this world that’s as awesome as booze and fire. Behold, the Rosewater Rickey:

Created (and photographed) by Jamie Boudreau at Vessel in Seattle, this is how it’s gonna go down:

Brulee in the bottom of a mixing glass:
5 pitted, brandied cherries
bar spoon of sugar
Angostura mist* (see below)

Fill with ice and add:
3 oz gin
1 bar spoon of rosewater
½ oz fresh lime juice

shake and strain into an iced Collins glass
top with soda water

*For Angostura mist, place equal portions of Angostura bitters and Lemon Hart 151 rum into an oil mister/sprayer.
To brulee the cherries, place them in your mixing glass, add the sugar, and mist the Angostura mixture through a flame.
Flame until sugar caramelizes.

As per usual, feel free to sub your own favorite spirit—I’d probably go with Hendrick’s for the gin, and since Lemon Hart 151 is extremely hard to come by, you may want a nice El Dorado (maybe the 8 year old?) or, in a pinch, Gosling’s Black Seal. Also, rosewater can usually be found in fancier groceries like Whole Foods or Fresh Market. Also-also, fire is awesome, but also hot. Be careful!

(Via Liqurious, as usual)

Poor Canada. Actually, no; poor Canadian liquor companies.

Like the U.S., Canada is saddled with a pretty sad rep abroad when it comes to its alcoholic exports. Both nations have thriving microbreweries, but by and large the rest of the world only knows us for Budweiser and Molson, respectively. Meanwhile, we’re inundated with awesome gin from Scotland (Hendrick’s), excellent vodka from—seriously—France (Grey Goose), and some seriously amazing rum from Portugal (El Dorado). Not to mention the tidal wave of awesome beers from Belgium and Germany!

Which means that the average Canadian beverage company is reduced to some pretty insane levels of gimmickry to make in-roads internationally. To wit: Frozen Ghost Vodka.

Sure, every product should have a story behind it, but to go to the lengths these guys have to drum up interest in some vodka? If it’s that awesome, shouldn’t its quality do most of the heavy lifting for you, marketing-wise?

(Via The Hairpin, courtesy of Adj!)