Alcademics.com

iPhone app showdown: Beer vs. Wine vs. Cocktails

I wanted to see what booze applications were available for the iPhone so I searched for beer, wine, and cocktails. Under cocktails, a whopping four applications came up. They all list recipes, and that's it. The coolest looking one with pictures of the drinks is in German.

It's a fairly disappointing selection. There should be virtual cocktail shakers and lime squeezers and conversion calculators between metric and standard just pretty pictures of drinks. Alas.

But the wine section is worse. Most of the items that came up in the search aren't actually wine applications. The ones that are are all versions of rating and tasting notes systems. Some come with the notes and others are applications for you to add them all. The advantages these have is for most of them you can take a picture of the label with your camera and add it to the review.

The beer people, on the other hand, are crafty. There are tasting/rating notes systems just like for the wine snobs, but much, much more. There are a few versions of virtual beer- one a foamy beer that you can "shake;" another a 40-ouncer that you can pour out in tribute to your fallen homies.

 

Also mostly in the beer section are all sorts of counters and calculators to track how much you've been drinking. My favorite is literally just a number counter that you increment for each beer you've consumed. Other ones are more complicated and try to compute your blood alcohol level based on your body weight and what specifically you've been drinking.

 

In any case, for the iPhone alcohol application creativity, this round goes to the beer drinkers.

 

Items: San Francisco edition

Chow.com has a round-up of San Francisco dive and cocktail bars in the Tenderloin neighborhood.

The SF Chronicle has a story on frozen drinks and outdoor bars.

Scott Beattie of Cyrus and hotels and farmers of Sonoma are doing Sonoma Locavore Experience weekend travel packages. 

Glossy Booze: late-August edition

944 Magazine (August, SF edition) has a story on the Press Club and biodynamic wine.

Playboy (September) has a recipe for The Democrat, which they say is the "house cocktail at San Francisco's Bourbon & Branch."

Details praises the "Obscure cocktail" including the Last Word (from the Hotel Delmano in NYC), Jack Rose (from the Eastern Standard in Boston), Old Pal (from the Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle), and Vieux Carre (from the Alembic in San Francisco).

7X7  (August) not only has Jordan Mackay's bartender story, they also have a graphic on the Anatomy of a Dive Bar.

SF new cocktail menus

I love that every new restaurant comes with a new cocktail menu to try out. Here are three of them that just have or are just about to open, with their full drink menus listed after the jump.

Miss Pearl's Jamhouse. The restaurant once located at the Phoenix Hotel (now Bambuddah Lounge, previously Backflip) will reopen in Jack London Square in Oakland in mid-August. The menu is rum, rum, and more rum in fun tropical drinks like the Bushwacker, Pusser's Painkiller, and even Jell-O shots.

Zare at Fly Trap. The classic restaurant has reopened with food that "reflects the culinary traditions of Spain, Greece, Italy and Zaré’s native Iran." Reza Esmali's cocktail menu does too- it's half "Barbary Coast Era" classics like the Martinez and Trader Vic' Original Mai Tai, and half "Mediterranean Style" drinks that include ingredients like figs, cardamom, and pistachio. I have a really good feeling about these drinks.

Urban Tavern. The small selection of cocktails at this place are mainly vodka, gin, and sparkling/still wine-based. But then they stick a Sazerac at the end to make you go: Huh? It seems a bit unfocused to me but I'll reserve judgment until I try them out.

See the full menus, after the jump.

He blended me with science

Blair from GoodSpiritsNews (a great place for booze links, cocktail contests, and events, by the way) was inspired by a post on Alcademics to test out an ultra-sonic cocktail shaker.

So he busted out the jewelry cleaner and loaded it with gin, vodka, bitters, and even ice made from purified water.

 

The conclusion? "It doesn't do a thing. Apparently you need physical movement to blend gin and vermouth. "

Well, at least now we know.

Anybody need to mail some booze?

Offer for SFers: I have a lot of wine/liquor bottle mailers I would love to give away. (Booze only flows into my apartment, not out.) They are cardboard boxes with styrofoam or cardboard bottle-shaped inserts. If anyone needs some, please drop me a note. I have enough to mail 18 bottles right now.

Vermouth

Paul Clarke has a big article in the SF Chronicle about vermouth. My favorite part was the history, most of which I didn't know:

Vermouth's commercial origins date to 1786, when Antonio Benedetto Carpano began marketing the aromatized wine he produced in Turin, but the consumption of vermouth and its precursors stretches back centuries. Typically made from neutral-character dry white wines that have been flavored with herbs, roots and barks - typically including cardamom, cinnamon, marjoram and chamomile - and then fortified with a neutral grape spirit, vermouth is classically made - and named - for another botanical: wormwood (the plant's name in Old High German is Wermud).

Used as a treatment against intestinal worms, wormwood has been added to wine and ale since at least the time of Greek mathematician Pythagoras, and wine infused with herbs including wormwood was utilized as a tonic and medical treatment by Hippocrates.

By the late 17th century, homemade vermouths were commonly made in the Piedmont region of Italy. In the decades following Carpano's commercial debut, other vermouth makers began production in Turin: The Cinzano family opened their facility in 1816. Martini & Rossi, now the largest manufacturer of vermouth, started production in 1863.

In 1813, Joseph Noilly created the style that came to be known as dry vermouth or French vermouth. By 1855, Noilly's son, Louis, and his brother-in-law, Claudius Prat, were producing Noilly Prat dry vermouth in the southern French village of Marseillan. Like the Italian firms, Noilly uses white grapes, specifically Clairette and Picpoul grapes grown in the Languedoc region of France, but doesn't color the wine. 

Starting with the aptly named Vermouth Cocktail, which debuted in print in 1869 and is composed of chilled vermouth with a twist of lemon peel, occasionally accented with dashes of bitters and maraschino liqueur - ample quantities of vermouth were consumed in cocktails in the decades that followed its mixological debut.

SF trend: Happy hour is back

Just a couple of months ago I wrote in San Francisco Magazine that very few high-end cocktail venues offered any happy hour discounts at all. (Here is my list of them that do.) Now venues are launching discount programs left and right, though mostly on food. Here are some that I've noticed:

- Level III to in Union Square launched a new happy hour program, offered Monday through Friday, from 4pm7pm.  Guests can order a choice of three reds, three whites, three cocktails and three bar nibbles at 50% off.

[next three via UrbanDaddy]

Jack Falstaff
Five is the magic number at this SoMa happy hour. Start with a $5 basil gimlet or a $5 martini, then throw back a few $5 spiced lamb meatballs, $5 fries topped with cheddar or crispy $5 pork belly. Give us five.
411: Wednesdays through Fridays, 5-7pm, Jack Falstaff, 300 Brannan St (at 2nd), 415-836-9239

Terzo
The secret to a successful happy hour is going one for one—one bite for every sip. So Terzo's giving away a daily app—think: spice toasted nuts, cured meat, homemade hummus and pita—for every beer, wine or aperitif you order. Stay balanced.
411: Weekdays now through Labor Day, 5:30-6:30pm, Terzo, 3011 Steiner St (at Union), 415-441-3200

Candybar
Despite its name and the fact it's SF's first "dessert lounge," you'll find daily deals on savory bites like beef cheeks and pork belly. Or pair your $3 Peroni or Fat Tire with a chocolate parfait with pralined cornnuts. That's our kind of dessert.
411: Daily from 6-7:30pm (closed Tuesdays), Candybar, 1335 Fulton St (at Divisadero), 415-673-7078

And I wrote a few weeks ago about the free meat at Morton's.