This is a quick post on some books I've read on women distilling in olden times. Distillation of spirits came out of medical alchemy (which is to say medical proto-science), and early alchemy books included lots of recipes for distilled medicines with stuff like gold and silver included in them.... Read more →
For my book Doctors and Distillers I referred to the Smithsonian's "Balm of America" collection of patent medicines. The collection is images of patent medicine bottles, pills, etc. I was just made aware of another patent medicine collection at NYU - and in this one you can spin the bottles... Read more →
I'm doing some historical research and came across this article from 1905 - just before the Pure Food & Drug Act was enacted. (See Doctors and Distillers for more about that!) This is from the "Truth" newspaper from Salt Lake City. It lists the alcohol percentages of many bitters and... Read more →
Here's something. I read a lot of books, most of them about liquor, but not all. I am in several book clubs but one of them is my "normal" club in which we discuss non-boozy books. (With exceptions! Once I chose a book on ice; more recently another member chose... Read more →
For the SFStandard, I wrote up a brief announcement and a few fun facts about The Anchor Brewing Story: America's First Craft Brewery & San Francisco's Original Anchor Steam Beer that is out today. [Purchase on Amazon or Bookshop] The story is here. Read more →
I read about a reference to distillation in the Pirotechnia, so I decided to look up the book. According to Wikipedia, "De la Pirotechnia is considered to be one of the first printed books on metallurgy to have been published in Europe. It was written in Italian and first published... Read more →
I was searching for some information on Wenham Lake Ice and stumbled across this article in The Food Journal, published in London in 1873. Wenham is a lake in Massachusetts and its ice was famous and exported to London (I have some interesting info about that in Doctors and Distillers),... Read more →
If you attended Tales of the Cocktail - virtually or in person - you have access to some recorded seminars. I watched and this post reports on one of those seminars: From Usquebaugh to Aqua Fructum: The Early Modern English Origins of English Gin By Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller... Read more →