Posts tagged alcohol

I recently blogged about the incredible renaissance of American beer brewing going on right now, but there’s another concoction that’s also enjoying a resurgence of intoxicating creativity and quality - yes, crack - but I’m referring to the cocktail.

While the origins of the word cocktail are murkier than a politician’s soul, some say the first printed use of the word is in The Farmer’s Cabinet on April 28, 1803.  Jared Brown of Mixellany argues however, that there was an earlier printed mention. Brown says in 1798 the Morning Post and Gazetteer reported that a London pub owner, on winning a lottery prize erased all his customers’ debts:

A publican, in Downing-street, who had a share of the 20,000l. prize, rubbed out all his scores, in a transport of joy: This was an humble imitation of his neighbour, who, when he drew the highest prize in the State Lottery, not only rubbed out, but actually broke scores with his old customers, and entirely forgot them.

The next week, on 20 March, 1798 the Morning Post and Gazetteer satirically listed the details of seventeen politicians’ pub debts, including the following:

Mr. Pitt, two petit vers of “L’huile de Venus”                        0   1   0

Ditto, one of “perfeit amour”                                            0   0   7

Ditto, “cock-tail” (vulgarly called ginger)                      0   0   0  3/4

William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister at the time, whose tenure was marked by the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. Implying he was drinking French beverages was akin to calling him a cheese-eating surrender monkey, but also suggests the word cocktail may have been a French loan word.

No doubt people had been drinking cocktails for many, many years prior to their making it into print. A cocktail was originally described as any concoction composed of a spirit (or spirits), water, sugar, and bitters (the ingredients of an Old Fashioned). At the time, bitters were a key constituent that differentiated a cocktail from Slings, Sours, Punches, Flips, Toddies, and a variety of other mixed drinks. The distinction has since largely evaporated.

An Old Fashioned

While America’s experiment with alcohol Prohibition from 1920-1933 was a truly fantastic failure, it did have a couple of serendipitous side effects. In the speakeasies that sprang up to serve illegal, home-brewed alcohol, women were able to socialize with men for the first time. Up until prohibition the only place a woman could publicly enjoy a tipple without social censure was in hotel bars - if she was a guest, as the wild west nature of the saloons were no place for a lady.

This ability for the sexes to mingle in public sexually charged the atmosphere of America, and also had an effect on the drinks served. Partly because it became almost impossible to find quality, unadulterated beer, and partly no doubt, due to the tastes of women, mixing and watering down the likes of rum and gin* became increasingly popular. By the end of prohibition on December 5th 1933, cocktails had become part of the American fabric.

Fast forward to the onset of the late 60’s, and other recreational drugs had become more freely available: weed, acid and coke chief amongst them, and cocktails found it hard to compete with the novelty of that sort of buzz. They fell out of favor, and it wasn’t until the 80’s that cocktails came back into fashion, as popularized by the 1988 Tom Cruise movie Cocktail.

Cocktails: they keep you young and gay

Like much of the pop culture of the time however, these were often terribly garish, syrupy, fruity concoctions, lacking in depth and subtlety. What most people equate with a Mai Tai for example, usually has little in common with its origins, which featured multiple rums and “fresh lime juice, given an ineffable twist with a dash of almond-flavored orgeat” (a syrup made from almonds, prepared with sugar and extract of orange flowers). The focus was less on the drinks - as flavorless vodkas came to replace gin, than on the ‘scene’ associated with them.

This started to change around the turn of the millennium. Taking off in the 90’s, there began a real shift from mass production and consumption towards smaller, natural, ‘authentic’ and local goods and services, particularly in food and drink. Traditional cocktails and gin began to make a come-back. One of the leaders of this new wave in cocktail making was an ambitious young New Yorker named Sasha Petraske. Aged 26, he opened a new bar called Milk & Honey in January 2000, situated at 134 Eldridge Street in New York’s Lower East Side; a formerly run-down, shabby neighborhood right on the cusp of being up and coming.

Getting away from the hoi polloi at Milk & Honey

With no signage, a reservation number that changed regularly, seating for less than 25, dim lighting, and most importantly - classic drinks hand-made with lots of love, Milk & Honey was a new type of establishment. It quickly racked up awards and featured on the World’s Best Bars. In the process Milk & Honey single-handedly redefined the term speakeasy from referring to an illegal Prohibition-era bar serving bootlegged or adulterated hooch, to a legal, modern bar with no street signage that served artisanal cocktails in a refined environment.

It was the first modern speakeasy.

Petraske attracted a lot of attention for various controversial measures, such as not taking walk-ins, disallowing standing, and the house rules:

1. No name-dropping, no star fucking.

2. No hooting, hollering, shouting or other loud behaviour.

3. No fighting, play fighting, no talking about fighting.

4. Gentlemen will remove their hats. Hooks are provided.

5. Gentlemen will not introduce themselves to ladies.
Ladies, feel free to start a conversation or ask the bartender to introduce you. If a man you don’t know speaks to you, please lift your chin slightly and ignore him.

6. Do not linger outside the front door.

7. Do not bring anyone unless you would leave that person alone in your home. You are responsible for the behaviour of your guests.

8. Exit the bar briskly and silently. People are trying to sleep across the street. Please make all your travel plans and say all farewells before leaving the bar.

While they appear overly anal to many, these rules were made for specific reason. Petraske’s landlord/friend lives directly above the bar, and he “only agreed to lease the space to Milk and Honey if Petraske would promise to maintain pin drop silence”. Petraske wanted clientele who knew “how to drink and remain polite, to each other and the residents of Eldridge Street.” It didn’t matter how famous you were - or weren’t, you couldn’t bribe your way in. You just needed to be referred by a friend, make a reservation, not be a dick - and you were in.

Petraske’s rules made the atmosphere much more relaxed - like being in a friend’s living room, than if you were being jostled and stood over by other patrons, and meant you could actually converse with your friends without having to shout. Tres civilized and egalitarian.

Milk & Honey’s success and influence caused variations of these rules to be adopted by several of Manhattan’s top speakeasies, such as PDT - short for Please Don’t Tell, accessible via a phone booth in the side of a hot dog joint in the East Village.

Mind your head at Please Don’t Tell

All this would be moot, falling into the realm of lame gimmickry, and Milk & Honey and PDT would have closed long ago - were it not for their serving cocktails that taste like freshly milked angel juice. But they are just two of many bars where mixologists construct elegant concoctions based on the classics, utilize locally-grown and seasonal produce, and make their own infusions, tinctures and bitters.

So enough history. What’s happening right now? Current cocktail trends include an explosion in artisanal and home-made bitters; the rediscovery of rum punches and consequent resurgence of tiki bars; ice sculpted to fit the glass they’re served in (not a gimmick: large, circular ice melts more slowly, keeping your drink cold without watering it down); speakeasies and bars that specialize exclusively in whiskey, tequila, or rum; savory drinks featuring food like bacon; molecular mixology; multiple types of absinthe coming back in a big way; and the rise of pulque, a Mexican fermented beverage made from the juice of the agave or maguey plant.

Today’s mixologists aren’t doing this part-time while they wait for their real life to kick in - they’re lifetime professionals, dedicated to their craft, constantly creating new levels of deliciousness that can be personalized directly to your tastes. (And when you’re spending $13+ for a drink, don’t be afraid to send it back if it’s not to your taste; they would rather you were a satisfied, repeat customer). Modern speakeasies are a great place to take a date, pontificate after dinner, or find out more about the always intriguing history of alcohol in an environment where boorish behavior is left at the door.

Bonus Time: Thirsty? Want to find the best speakeasies and cocktail lounges in New York City - spiritual home of the cocktail? I’ve painstakingly constructed a Google Map that’s taken countless hours of research to personally verify each venue’s worthiness. Enjoy…

View New York’s Finest Cocktail Joints in a larger map

*What we know today as gin is the English version of a 16th century Dutch liquor called Genever (which used to outsell gin six to one in the US before Prohibition, and is another vintage spirit that’s making a comeback). Genever began as a type of malt wine infused with juniper berries to mask the flavor, and is where we get the term ‘dutch courage’ from.

The majority of people have a fairly simple relationship with beer. If you’re a girl it’s probably a beverage you usually associate with hot days or being at the beach; if you’re a guy you probably associate beer mainly with sports or just getting rat-arsed with your buddies.

But if that’s not too far from how you feel about beer - it’s time you reconsidered your associations. Beer, and in particular American beer, has undergone a stunning renaissance over the last 25 years, and is right now enjoying a moment of creativity and quality that’s unrivaled in human history. Beer - surprisingly enough - has become sophisticated.

(Certain you can’t be convinced to try new beer? Well stop reading, slap yourself for your close-mindedness, and check out today’s exciting renaissance in cocktail culture).

Let’s wind the clock back a little to see just how we got to this frankly, glorious moment in time. It all starts way back in 1920 with the nakbar, or catastrophe that was Prohibition, (on which subject there’s an excellent Ken Burns Doco now screening on PBS - 1st episode: A Nation Of Drunkards below).

(See more Ken Burns here.)

The temperance movement had already succeeded in shutting down many breweries, and when the Constitution’s 18th amendment banned the production, sale & consumption of liquor, the last 1500 or so breweries closed their doors.

Nearly a decade and a half later America’s taps finally started pouring again, albeit slowly due to the still-strong temperance movement. But before the American beer industry could re-establish itself, WWII began, forcing grain rationing, which meant smaller brewers had to insert corn and rice as substitutes, inhibiting their growth. From 1941 til 1945 beer production exploded by 40%, but it was from an ever decreasing group of mega breweries like Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser) and Coors that came to dominate the market for the next 50 years with their light, flavorless lagers and pilsners.

American beer became a joke around the world, nicely encapsulated by this riddle:

Q: What do American beer and sex in a canoe have in common?

A: They’re both fucking close to water.

If it wasn’t for Jimmy Carter, this sad and tragic state of affairs might still be the case today; but in 1978 Carter legalized home brewing. This sparked a resurgence of interest in beer from passionate people who began to create beers with flavor. At the time, many people who tried ‘craft’ beers shrugged them off as “too strong”. But after a while people’s palates began to adjust to beers with flavor, body and aroma, in contrast to the bland swill they’d historically been served.

Home brewers got good enough at what they did, that they started their own micro-breweries. This really was an unusual case of creating demand for something people didn’t know they wanted (because like an iPhone, it didn’t exist before), rather than the usual focus-group-tested and market-researched approach to product launches in the modern business world.

Today, while the overall beer market in America - and in most industrialized countries - is stagnant or declining, the pricier craft beer segment continues to grow anywhere between 5% and 10% annually. This is in the face of a worldwide economic collapse.

Why the surging popularity? It’s largely due to the consistently increasing quality and range of styles on offer. American brewers are now regarded as leading the world because of their innovative, take-no-prisoners approach to brewing. Even prestigious German and Belgian brewers, who arguably have made the best beer in the world for the longest, are today influenced by American brewers. And English consumers crave American brews (even if some of their journalists are a little fuzzy on the difference between a lager and an ale).

It’s also no doubt in part because people are increasingly realizing the range of beers on offer in most convenience stores in the US offers more and better options for matching with food than your local wine store ever can.

Yeah I said it - beer is better for matching with food than wine. (Cheese in particular). “Sacre bleu!” and “Bullshit!” I hear you cry. How can this be? It’s simple.  While wine is made with one ingredient - grapes - beer is made with four ingredients: water, barley, yeast and hops; all of which reflect the terroir they come from. And it can be made with many more ingredients. Because of this, beer simply has a much wider variety of flavors and textures than wine, that can both complement and contrast with food.

Here’s a very useful chart for matching beer with food. Download it and go explore!

There are nearly 100 or so different styles of beer available and growing. Arguably the most famous new style is Cascadian Dark Ale, also known as a black IPA, and the innovation in the industry, notorious for beer names, beer blurbs, and increasingly insane quantities of alcohol - even extends to the packaging.

How’s that? Cans are becoming in vogue over bottles, much as screw-caps are displacing corks in wine bottles. Wait a minute. Wasn’t it the mass produced shitty beer that was in cans and the good stuff in bottles? Not any more. Light is the enemy of beer because it oxidizes it, making it stale (which is why beer isn’t produced in clear bottles). Cans also weigh less, don’t shatter into foot eating shards, and are much more convenient outdoors, or in cities that forbid bottles in public places like parks and beaches.

Anyway, before I get carried away talking about how the main difference in flavor between Belgian beers and American beers is that the Belgians focus more on the yeast, while the Americans focus more on the hops, I think I should just leave it here for now. Below is my gift to you, a map I constructed of the best places for craft beer in New York. It’s by no means complete - works in progress are like that - but it should come in handy for anyone looking for a good brew in New York.

(View New York’s Greatest Craft Beer Joints in a larger map)

If New York’s a bit far away from you, I recommend perusing the Beer Mapping Project for a comprehensive list of US cities, as well as 12 other countries around the world. 

Cheers!