Alcademics

Daytime Cocktails for New Years Brunch Camper English, Special to the Chronicle

New Year's Day often arrives with one pondering the previous night's indulgences and the resulting aftereffects. On the upside, this can also be done with a cocktail in hand.

Whether consuming them to nurse the previous night's hangover or just to pass the lazy New Year's holiday, adults have a free pass to enjoy cocktails before noon on Tuesday.

Typical brunch cocktails include the bloody Mary, mimosa, screwdriver and Irish coffee, with fresh derivations of these standards now on morning menus throughout the Bay Area. Additionally, frothy Southern breakfast drinks like the Ramos gin fizz are coming back into vogue, though drinkers' aversions to raw eggs and the negative associations with imbibing in the morning may be obstacles to their popularity.

In "The Joy of Drinking," author Barbara Holland addresses the National Institutes of Health's "pompous treatise" against readministration of alcohol (more widely known as "the hair of the dog that bit you") to cure the hangover, for fear that it encourages alcoholism.

She writes, "I don't know what social circles the NIH travels in, but I myself have never seen any sufferer, after shakily sipping his bloody Mary, let out a whoop, grab the vodka bottle and chug it down."

Labels: camper_clips, cocktails, SanFrancisco