Alcademics

My latest story for Food & Wine is "Why the Shape and Size of Ice in Your Drink Matters." Check it out here. Read more →

My latest story for the San Francisco Chronicle is about all the ways bartenders are liquifying olives in their Martinis - in the vermouth, gin, vodka, brine, leaf tinctures, oil-washing everything, and even an “olive turducken.” Here’s a gift link so you can read it. Read more →

Bartenders joke about male customers who ask for their cocktails to be served in a “man glass” - an Old Fashioned rocks glass rather than in a cocktail glass on a stem, fearful that the Martini glass will make them look gay. I am reading the preview of the forthcoming... Read more →

I did an interview with America’s Test Kitchen a long time ago, and it just went up. The first half of the episode is on the history of ice. I come in at around 27 minutes in. The episode is called Why Are Americans So Obsessed with Ice? Start your... Read more →

I wrote about oleo citrate and super juice for the San Francisco Chronicle. These are techniques for increasing the yield from citrus fruits by eight times or so, using a touch of citric and malic acid powder in a specific way to bump up the flavor and texture of citrus... Read more →

I am reading The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld by Herbert Asbury for the first time as I research San Francisco cocktail history. (You can buy it on [amazon] [bookshop] to support this blog.) My impression of this book is that the “informal” part of... Read more →

My first story for Food & Wine just went live. I took advice from 95 years of cocktail etiquette books, beginning in 1930 and ending with the publication of How to Be a Better Drinker last week [amazon] [bookshop]. I had fun going through my cocktail book collection to find... Read more →

I am keeping all the year’s new drink books on this post: New Drink Book Releases in 2025 But I wanted to make sure that you saw just the new updates so I’ll repeat then here. April through May 2025 Drink Book Releases The Official Barbie Cocktail Book: 50 Dreamy... Read more →

I just finished reading The Hour of Absinthe: A Cultural History of France's Most Notorious Drink [amazon] [bookshop] by Nina Studer. The book is an academic look at parts of absinthe’s history. (I wrote another blog post about one aspect of it - that wine was considered a better base... Read more →

Here I made you something: Read more →