Blue Beer

Just been reading about this blue-colored seaweed-tinged beer from Abashiri Brewery, located on the Japanese island of Hokkaido... where the heck can I score me some o' this in Kentucky?? I'm a fan of all things blue. Apparently, it's not specially flavored or berry-licious or anything, it just happens to be blue.

Abashiri is infamous for its unusual brews: another of their concoctions is a beer fermented from milk. Cleverly enough, they call it "Bilk". I'm excited about their blue beer, but this one... not so much.

- - JSH

A Clown Grows in Brooklyn

Yes, this holiday season, why not take the whole family out to see a Shakespeare puppet play whose authenticity is disputed by most scholars, starring a clown, a pregnant woman, and Satan, held in a delightfully squalid Brooklyn warehouse?

- - JSH

Desperate Telegram

Col. Dockery's been laying low lately - real low, like maybe under a rock in Utah. Or Moores Creek, KY. Man, he's out there, he's really out there. But the home office received this missive from him today, after inquiring as to his online absence:

"I drum. I draw. I drink. Man, this crazy life I'm leading don't lend itself to blogging."

- - JSH

Caviar

I'll just take a moment here to give props to one of my favorite places to go in Louisville when I'm in the mood for fine cocktails in a cozy atmosphere - Caviar Japanese Restaurant on 416 W. Muhammad Ali Blvd. Even if you're not into the sushi scene, my fellow lout, the drinks are effervescently tasty (best. mojito. ever. not kidding.) and the Yakitori (grilled chicken on bamboo skewers) will make you feel all's right with the Universe.



- - JSH

Quest for Fire

One from our Revelation Awaits an Appointed Time blog:


There's a whole multiverse (literally!) of cool old cigarette lighters out there, all of which are perfectly suitable for time-transcending troublemakers such as ourselves. The above one, cleverly concealed in a pocketwatch housing, was found on Pewtersmith's flickr. A particular favorite is the World War I military lighters fashioned out of spent .30-caliber cartridge casings. Here's one, spotted on Zenbeer's flickr:


The first cigarette lighters were called Döbereiner's Lamps, invented in Germany by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner in 1823. These worked by way of a charmingly Rube Goldberg sequence of events: zinc metal reacts with sulfuric acid in a small glass jar, producing hydrogen gas which is released when a valve is opened. This jet of hydrogen bursts into flame when ignited by platinum.


Lighters are swell, and I own zillions of 'em, from antiques to mid-century Zippos to cheesy plastic contemporaries - but what I really prefer to light my stogies with is good old-old-old-fashioned wooden matches. Kitchen matches in particular are dripping with mythic resonance, and dammit, they smell great. (I am a card-carrying Philluminist and love all things matchy.)


The Diamond Match Company has nice old-timey matches that can be found in any supermarket, but they also make hard-to-find "strike anywhere matches", which is how all old matches actually used to be. Once upon a time, the white phosphorus on matchheads was so sensitive you could rub a match against almost any surface and make it go off, and the sudden poof of flame could be quite powerful and flashy compared to the wimpy matches of the 21st century.

Ever wondered why people in the movies were managing to strike matches in weird places? In Stalag 17, for example, William Holden lights a match against someone's razor-stubbled chin; and the high flammability of those good old-timey matches was also a key part of that film's plot, with an American soldier devising a time-bomb by nestling a lit cigarette amongst a pack of matches. When the cig burned down to all those volatile white phosphorus matchheads, KABOOM!

In Miller's Crossing, Tom contemptuously lights a match off a policeman's chest, which is believable since the film takes place during prohibition. Not so much with The Breakfast Club, though: Bender lights a match off his teeth, and then lights one off his shoe, which isn't possible with modern matches unless he's gone to the trouble to cut the striking board off a pack of matches and glue it to the edge of his sole. (Hmmm... that's not a bad idea actually...)

A zillion cinematic tough guys in old noir films would conceal a strike-anywhere match in their hand, and with a one-handed flip of the wrist, ignite it against their thumbnail and bring it to their cig, making it appear to modern tv-watchers that they somehow magically just conjured up fire out of nowhere.


Swan Vestas, pictured above, are a British strike-anywhere match said to be more powerful and more like the old classic formula than Diamond's. I'd love to try these out, doubly so for the fact that Victorian burlesque drag-king Vesta Tilley took her showbiz name from the term "Vesta" (a 19th century brand of matches that was so popular, it ended up becoming a generic term).

- - JSH

The Hertz-Starks Building

I'm diggin' my new offices in the gloriously retro Starks Building, a place just radiating art deco classiness and Barton Fink eerieness.

It's actually called the Hertz-Starks Building these days, now that the great Mendel Hertz has made it a major project of his to renovate the place and restore it to its original glory. 1980s carpet has been removed from the offices, revealing 1960s linoleum underneath, and having removed that too, 1910s hardwood floors are seeing the light of day again.

Old tenants like the Colonnade Restaurant and the old-guy clothing store Rodes, who had been kicked out by the previous owner (incompetent and uncaring file-jockeys at Allstate Insurance), are being urged to return and turn back the clock once again to the way it was. How can I not get behind a metachronistic undertaking such as this?

It's paradise, Captain. Paradise.






- - JSH

The Old Fashioned Cocktail

Calling all Transylvania Gentlemen: next time you want a sweet-n-fruity drink that is also somehow simultaneously radiating he-man gravitas, try that Kentucky creation known as an Old Fashioned. You know, the one Cole Porter sings about in "Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please".

As Drinkboy says, "The Old Fashioned is an old drink, a very old drink". I like to imagine William S. Burroughs saying this, in exactly the same way he says in the Naked Lunch film, "America is not a young country. It is old... and dirty... and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians, the evil was there, waiting."

Supposedly, the first drink ever to be called a 'cocktail' was the Old Fashioned, and the Old Fashioned was supposedly invented in Louisville at the Pendennis Club. Supposedly. It's probably as specious a factoid as Kaelin's claim to have invented the cheeseburger, but what the heck, that's their story and they're stickin' to it. It sounds good to me and I ain't gonna squawk.

The aforementioned Drinkboy cites a book called Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett, in which it states that the Old Fashioned was invented by Col. James E. Pepper from Kentucky. Pepper was a member of the Pendennis Club, and the book says he introduced the drink to NYC by teaching the bartender at the Waldorf-Astoria how to make it. I did a little digging and sure enough, I tracked down numerous references in the New York Times to Col. Pepper regaling high society pals in New York.


The earliest example of a recipe known is in "Modern American Drinks" (1895) by George J. Kappeler. It says simply:

"Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes Angostura bitters, a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass."

The version in Irwin S. Cobb's recipe book is a bit more complex:

"One-half piece Sugar, 2 dashes Angostura Bitters, 11/2 jiggers Paul Jones or Four Roses Whiskey, 1 slice Orange, 1 slice Lemon, 1 slice Pineapple, 2 dashes Curacao. Muddle sugar and bitters with pestle. Add cube of ice, whiskey and Curacao and decorate with fruit. This cocktail was created at the Pendennis Club in Louisville in honor of a famous old-fashioned Kentucky Colnel. I claim it was worthy of him."

But it's David Embury, in his 1948 The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, that gives the most in-depth rundown:

"Pour into each glass 1 to 2 teaspoonfuls simple syrup and add 1 to 3 dashes Angostura. Stir with a spoon to blend the bitters with the syrup. Add about 1 oz. whisky and stir again. Add 2 large cubes of ice, cracked but not crushed (see page 100). Fill glass to within about 3/8" of top with whisky and stir again. Add a twist of lemon and drop peel in the glass. Decorate with a maraschino cherry on a spear. Serve with short stir rod or Old-Fashioned spoon.

I have been intentionally somewhat indefinite about the quantity of sugar and bitters for two reasons. First, you should experiment and determine for yourself just how sweet you like the drink and just how much of the bitters flavor suits you best. Second, I have stated the recipe in terms of filling your Old-Fashioned glasses to within about 3/8" of the top and I do not know the exact size of your glasses. Tastes vary somewhat, of course, but I have found that most people like about 1 teaspoonful of sugar and 1 to 2 dashes of Angostura to each 2 ounces of whisky.

Also, please note that I have suggested only a cherry and a bit of lemon peel for decorations. You will frequently find Old-Fashioneds served with lemon, orange, cherry, and pineapple. The bartenders' manuals of the Gay Nineties were replete with illustrations of cocktails, Sours, Crustas, Smashes, Cobblers, and other drinks decorated with all the above fruits together with strawberries, grapes, raspberries, etc., according to the available supply and the fancy of the writer. At the other extreme stand those who contemptuously refer to any cocktail decoration as "the garbage." My own opinion is that fruit flavors and liquors blend exquisitely and that, for a midafternoon or an evening drink, and Old-Fashioned is greatly improved in its over-all appeal by the judicious addition of a few fruits. Fruits, however, properly belong at the end of a dinner rather than at the beginning. Accordingly, when serving Old-Fashioneds as an aperitif, I recommend using only the lemon peel with no fruit at all, or at the most, a cherry or a slice of orange.

Note that in the Old-Fashioned the only modifying agents used are the bitters and sugar. The reaction time of this cocktail is slower than that of a Martini both because of its sugar content and because the whisky is slower than gin. Don't be deceived by this. It is not a lighter drink than the Martini; it is stronger. Its action is merely delayed."

So what's the difference between an Old Fashioned and a Manhattan? Well, honestly, not much, except for the sugar, the vermouth, and the fact that most bartenders today leave the bitters out of a Manhattan. Alcoholic scholars still debate whether the cherry in an Old Fashioned should be muddled or not muddled. (I say: when in doubt, muddle.)


- - JSH