The human body is almost 62% water, and we can all agree that people are pretty important. The Earth’s surface is 75% water, and clearly, the planet is very important. Beer is roughly 93% water, so clearly it must be the most important thing in the world. Given my inscrutable reasoning, it pains me to say that there is one thing more important than beer, and that is water itself — which, given the amount of various compounds it contains, is roughly 99.985% H2O.  Because of this remaining 0.015% , not all water is the same, and I don’t mean to sound bigoted, but some waters are better than others. Various brewing styles around the world weren’t initially dictated by marketing campaigns but rather by a region’s respective natural water supply. The differences in the beers are often black and white, or in brewing terms, black and light. For example, [...]

First came the steam engine, then refrigeration, and then lager beer… and lager beer became damn popular. Shortly after the California Gold Rush, the pioneers gave the world steam beer. You see, lager beer is aged briefly, or “lagged” at cold temperatures. But there was no refrigeration yet in San Francisco in the 1850s, and all those thirsty miners wanted lager. So the brewers tried making lager beer without refrigeration — at ale temperatures. At first it was a total flop. By the time the hot brew of hops and barley cooled, wild yeasts and other buggers had gotten in and spoiled the batch before the lager-style yeasts could be added. Some nameless, innovative brewer came up with “cool ships”: long shallow pans into which the beer was poured, allowing the wort (unfermented beer) to cool much more rapidly. Once the temperature had dropped to where the lager yeasts could [...]

As the writer of a ‘New Booze’ column, I never thought I’d be able to talk about sherry, but here we are: Bodegas Grant is the newest sherry producer imported to the US, and just in time for a resurgence in popularity of this previously obscured wine. Sherry has been produced for centuries and plays an integral role in the aging of spirits, as sherry casks add unique flavor to a variety of spirits, but there has been very little rhetoric surrounding it in the modern cocktail community until recently. There is a romance and an unmatched mystique to this wine, but many bodegas outside of Jerez, sherry’s production region in Spain, have been shuttered due to the world’s waned enthusiasm. A new, boutique sherry producer being imported is both exciting and relieving. Bodegas Grant is located in El Puerto de Santa Maria, southwest of Jerez on the shore of [...]

Grapevines are among the most finicky of crops. Not content to just be sensitive to whims of weather, grapes even resist the best intentions of modern civilization. the establishment of trade routes between the americas and Europe irreversibly changed not only the fortunes of many now-defunct wine chateaux, but it also forever changed the way that a vineyard is planted. Genetic (and marketing) research now makes it possible to grow just about any type of grape in any type of vineyard given the proper vine clones. the specter of climate change (if you happen to believe in “science”) is already wreaking havoc in established wine regions and making new ones as we speak. before any of this factors in, it all begins with dirt. Viticulturists and soil go together like cats and catnip. They need to feel it, grind it up, smell it, taste it, and analyze it endlessly. And [...]

“Have you ever considered how often we set stuff on fire?” the bartender asked as he set my Manhattan down. As if to illustrate his point, he deftly flexed an orange peel over the drink, sparking the citrus oils into flame with a match struck on the edge of the bar. It’s true, when you think about it. Everyone has a hazy memory of sucking down flaming shots of one kind or another and feeling a bit dangerous. For me, it was ouzo. Some like to set absinthe on fire as part of the elaborate drinking ritual; this practice was developed in order to make Czech absinthe palatable, but most distillers I’ve met frown on having their product cooked. I once watched author Wayne Curtis use a charcoal starter to ignite overproof rum-soaked gunpowder – WHOOSH! – to demonstrate how alcoholic content was tested prior to the invention of the [...]