Archive for the ‘Booze’ Category
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008I’ve been meaning to write about this since May 3rd, but I’m completely lame. Way back then, some awesome UCI grad student whose name is now lost to me hosted a combination Kentucky Derby party and bourbon tasting. I forgot to take notes, so two months later we’re going on some pretty vague memories. That said, I did write down the names of my favorite three. Those were, in order of both increasing deliciousness and more awesome name:
- Woodford Reserve — I recall this being a really drinkable sort of whiskey. Sort of a more flavorful Knob Creek (which was kind of boring, compared to everything that followed).
- Booker’s — Can’t remember much about this, except that I liked it a lot.
- Pappy Van Winkle — I think we tried the fifteen year, which is old for a bourbon, but young for this brand. Anyway, this was my favorite, by kind of a wide margin. If you think my stepfather isn’t getting a bottle of this for Christmas, or that we aren’t opening it before we’re done handing out gifts, you’ve got another think coming.
Other things I recall trying include Buffalo Trace and the reserve or high-end versions of Early Times and Wild Turkey. My impression was that all of those were fine, but not as smooth as the Woodford or as good as the Booker’s. There must be a few I’m forgetting, but we’ll assume that only means they were forgettable. The last thing we tried was Bulleit, which (if I recall correctly) I found tasty but a little too challenging, making it the Oaked Arrogant Bastard of bourbons.
Meanwhile, this post has a title, which references the fact that I’ve never found whiskey from elsewhere to be all that great. Possibly this is because all I can recall ever drinking is the Jameson’s that Tony was putting into everything during sophomore year. Based on this evidence, I declare that Americans make the best whiskey. If you disagree, I invite you to buy me some Scotch, to show me how retarded I am.* That’ll teach me.
*Everyone knows the internet is great at magically producing Scotch.**
**Will I ever get tired of remembering the time the wingnuts banded together to support the just cause of Christopher Hitchens’s drinking problem? Probably not, but I suppose it’s conceivable.
This weekend I went with Ruth, Lars, Teiko, Noel (who is visiting Ruth’s lab for the summer), and The Disgruntled Chemist to the Stone brewery in Escondido. The set-up there is really great. They have a lush (for southern California, anyway) beer garden, where you can get one of their delicious beers, take it outside, and enjoy it on the grass. They do free tours, where you can learn about the beer-making process, see some huge tanks and a bottling line that’s been in a movie, and hang out in a massive beer fridge. Somewhere in that room are the brewer’s few remaining bottles of Stone Vertical Epic 02/02/02, which they say goes for $800 on eBay.
At the end of the tour you get to try four of their delicious ales (the pale ale, the smoked porter, the IPA, and Arrogant Bastard). Because we asked questions, Steve and I were rewarded* with a taste of the XI Anniversary Ale as well. I had had the first four before, and they were as good as always. I thought the anniversary ale was awesome.
Here’s us, in the company store, during the tasting. As I’m sure you expect, there wasn’t anything wrong with the camera here, the beer just made Teiko a bit fuzzy.
I also had the Vertical Epic 07/07/07, which was outstanding, and the Chipotle Pepper Porter, which was pretty tasty.
The rest of our pictures are here, and TDC’s notes on the beers are here.
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*Yeah, they rewarded us with booze for asking questions. Clearly they don’t get many graduate students on their tours.
Ruth and I took advantage of the long weekend provided by Martin Luther King, Jr. day and drove up to visit her brother Leon, who is in the CS PhD program at Berkeley. In the process, I learned something incredible: there are parts of California which are really interesting an entertaining. Who knew?
While there, we saw pretty good sketch comedy at The Dark Room, toured Scharffen Berger (our favorite chocolate maker), ate outstanding tapas, walked around several used book stores, and generally made ourselves sad that we live in Orange County.
The best part, however, was the tour of Sonoma County wine country. More on that after the jump.
Good news: [t]wo studies [...] demonstrated that coffee drinking might protect against liver cirrhosis.
It’s always nice when two health-wrongs make one health-not-as-wrong.
(Via The Register and Keats’ Telescope.)
[Meanwhile, I apologize for the speed with which this has turned into a booze-blog. I'll work on finding more non-alcoholic material in the near future.]
A lot of blog systems have a way for you to write an email to the system, which it will then translate into a post. I was not aware that TBND had such a feature. Turns out we do, and it’s me.
Says Tony:
Todd pointed out that the English can drink. Unfortunately, they have poor taste in beer. I entered the bar in Heathrow with a few aims:
- Order an English beer
- Get the (English) beer with the highest ABV
- Get something on draught.
- Don’t spend more than £3.50
Ultimately, that landed me with Fuller’s, which was not a total disappointment, but not as good as one would expect beer abroad to be.
I’ll (hopefully) post soon with more info on my travels, which are (for once) taking me to some interesting shores.
The email-post system — with its sophisticated language comprehension system — responds, “What, Vienna wasn’t sufficiently interesting? Prick.”