Edible and Audible

On the lookout for a new beer to try (no, it’s not all fancy cocktails in this household) Laura came across a gem, Brooklyn Black Ops Stout, a limited release stout from Brooklyn Brewery that is aged in bourbon barrels for 4 months. It has some of the typical chocolate/vanilla/coffee presence that a good stout often carries but felt a bit lighter than most stouts to me, perhaps due to the strong presence of the bourbon which provides a noticeable alcohol tang, cutting through, yet still in harmony, with the other flavors. The beer is bottled in a champagne-style magnum, but that’s not the only characteristic it shares with the bubbly wine – this beer has champagne yeast added to the bottle after aging has occurred (which leaves the beer flat) and re-ferments in the bottle, giving you the joy of the champagne pop when you open it and probably contributing to the lighter feel mentioned earlier. Another characteristic they share – this beer is 11% ABV, do yourself a favor and drink it slower than I did.

The vast majority of gin consumed in this country today and for essentially the last 100 years or so falls under the category of London Dry – Tanqueray, Beefeater, Bombay are the most popular and recognizable. This popularity can be directly attributable to the fact that a London Dry is generally the go-to gin for some of the more popular gin-based drinks, the Gin and Tonic and Martini, as the crispness from the juniper and citrus plays nicely with the flavors of tonic water and vermouth alike. Plymouth gin, a classic gin hailing from Plymouth, England and a category all on it’s own, is regaining some traction in the U.S. at more high-end drinking establishments as its smoothness and higher proportion of citrus notes make it as good in a Martini as it is in a sour or other citrus-based cocktail (don’t waste it in a Gin and Tonic, though, it can’t stand up to the an ingredient as powerful as tonic water). There are a whole crop of new boutique-style gins earning some popularity, but the vast majority of these are variations, albeit occasionally some highly creative ones, of a London Dry or Plymouth-style gin.

The Martini may seem a somewhat mundane topic for a blog in this day and age – there are many new innovations and re-discovered classics waiting to be tried, but I think it bears mentioning for two reasons: 1)it’s still a damn good drink and 2)hardly anyone makes it correctly. How can such a simple drink be screwed up time and time again?

Goddamn I needed a drink last night. As the weekend was filled with all sorts of great libations I had previously decided to take a few days off to give the ole liver a snooze but after a truly miserable day that plan was drop-kicked out the window and left to writhe on the pavement. I also just picked up some Scrappy’s chocolate bitters recently and was eager to try them out and see how they compared to the Bitter Truth Chocolate Mole bitters, which is as good of a rationalization as I need.

Ahh, drinking. We’ve been through some crazy times, both good and perhaps less than good. We’ve shared some laughs, shed some tears. Our relationship has changed over the years, starting with white-hot lust over anyone who’d cast a glance our way (i.e. piss-poor flavored beer or sickeningly sweet schnapps) and gradually matured into a steady, comfortable grown-up relationship consisting of a good beer, a martini, a gin and tonic. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still drink beer and gin and tonics all day long, but at some point I needed something more, something to rekindle a little of that lust of an earlier time without the horrendous hangover or waking up in a cruise ship infirmary.