My book Doctors and Distillers got a nice review in Publishers Weekly! Cocktail and beverage writer English makes a spirited debut with this vibrant cultural history of alcohol’s transition from medicine to social lubricant. Gin and tonic, a popular concoction consumed by British soldiers in the 1800s to stave off... Read more →
It's been way too long since I did a new booze round-up. These images are all from my Instagram page, and how I'm largely covering new products hitting the market. Read more →
Since 2009 I have been weighing liquor bottles before recycling them. I was up to 1226 bottles weighed and decided it was about time for me to analyze the data. At the bottom of the post I'll include a link to my spreadsheets. Note that I dated when I weighed... Read more →
Empress By Boon is the fine dining restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown at the site of the former Empress of China. I stopped by for happy hour the other day and was treated to these sixth-floor views: Bar Manager Emily Parian says that it's not very busy at happy hour... Read more →
I had the opportunity to check out Bottle Club Pub, the latest venue from Future Bars (Bourbon & Branch, Rickhouse, Zombie Village, etc) located adjacent to Swig off Union Square. One of the weird strong points for this bar group is excavation: They turned Bourbon & Branch into a 3-room... Read more →
In researching tiki, I realized that these terms are often used interchangeably and I wanted to know the difference. Oceania: The largest region of Pacific islands including Australia: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, extends all the way to Hawaii. When I visited the Bishop Museum in Honolulu they had great... Read more →
Pabu in San Francisco recently updated the cocktail menu with several new drinks. I met Mike Lay, Mina Group Director of Bars, who filled me in on what was new. I asked the bartender working that shift what he thought the most popular ones were so far, and in his... Read more →
I just finished reading Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History by Frederick H. Smith. (Buy it from these links on Bookshop or Amazon and I earn a tiny commission.) The book brought me so much new information, and I strongly recommend it. Most of the time when we study... Read more →
I decided to measure the rate of freezing of an ice block in my (pretty crappy) freezer at home. It's just a standard apartment freezer. For all four times, I began with the same set of parameters: Igloo Legend 12 cooler 6 liters of cold tap water (this fills up... Read more →
Bar Iris, the Japanese-influenced cocktail bar in Russian Hill, currently lists 7 cocktails on the menu. The drinks, including Okinawa (rum, okinawa yam, calamansi, oat milk, plum) that I wrote about for Eater, are the result of tons of prep work for the ingredients before service. A lot of the... Read more →