On the one hand: cocktails good.
On the other hands: “cocktail culture” bad.
And the effluvia of “cocktail culture?” Just plain silly.
Although two thubs up to the entrepreneurs involved!
18 thoughts on “Dilemma”
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“thubs” = cocktail culture?
LOL! From that article, here is the comment of the week: “The best hand cut ice is made from condensed unicorn breath.”
I do have to admit that after trying, I do order my bourbon/whiskey/rye over a single bigass ice cube. It is better. Haven’t tried the unicorn breath ones yet though.
Bringing ice to Mn is a little like bring coals to Newcastle.
Scotch, Irish Single Malt, Bourbon, neat, please.
Hard liquor with ice just gets me in trouble.
All the soggy bottom distillers I know say you should have 1 ice cube in the jar to “open up” the flavor and cut it down to <120 proof.
I’m on career number 3, and that career deals with distilled spirits. Swiftee is right – a bit of ice (or sprinkle of water) can open up the spirit and bring out some different flavors. There’s something to be said for the larger cubes. However, hand-cutting and chipping ice is getting a little crazy. It’s the 21st century. I find a sawzall does quite a nice job. I have a feeling that this trend will last about a year.
Additionally, we try to make our larger cubes out of the tears of liberals. We run them through desalination first, and then freeze them. They tend to not impart any off flavors, as there is absolutely no thought behind them, and they are super cheap since they are in such abundance. The night Bernie spoke at the DNC, I got enough tears to last a year. In addition to all the other reasons, I really hope Trump wins – I’ll be there on the day after the election collecting enough for the rest of the century.
There will be plenty of hand-cut ice available at the summer MOB Party, right?
I thought we were supposed to use stone cubes, or plastic, or something that didn’t dilute the bourbon?
Of course, I drink Old Crow so it’s not like that’s a huge deal to me.
It strikes me that as you get to the extreme levels of those who enjoy a certain food, drink, or activity, every little thing starts to become hyper-important. I see some of the same things among beer and wine lovers. It goes from drinking beer out of a glass instead of a bottle so one can enjoy the scent to having about 30 different kinds of glasses in one’s bar area so one can perfectly match the drink to the glass.
Too much work for my taste!
Hello.
Now that I have carefully glittered your beard, let me offer you a boutique cocktail, served with ice hand carved from a Chilean glacier.
Do you recall the elevator scene from The Producers? How uncomfortable those gentlemen looked!
They do not understand that when gentlemen become . . . close . . . certain intimacies may follow, manly intimacies that are impossible to achieve with the female sex.
You look uncomfortable, my friend. May I massage your shoulders? Before I became a bartender, I was a sports masseuse. The women athletes even allowed me in their locker room!
They were cows.
Bubba, you have it right. When a guy starts buying a thing that costs twice what it’s really worth, a ritual is necessary to drag out the experience.
I love cigars; don’t usually go over board on ritual, but I had a good smoke a couple weeks ago courtesy of a friend who bet me a Cuban cigar that we’d be able to buy Cuban’s legally by the end of July.
Of course that didn’t happen, and this is what he paid me with:
http://tinypic.com/r/25jjwnl/9
Got no idea what he paid for that mother, but I didn’t want to smoke it without some fanfare so I took it to our town smoke shop, ordered a Pappy Van Winkles with an ice ball, natch, (another overpriced thing) and lit it with a piece of cedar.
It was pretty damn good. I’d share a picture of my expression of bliss, but don’t want to give my creepy cyber stalkers any more ammo.
BTW…can anyone tell why Cuban cigars were so good before the Castro’s, and why they won’t be as good ever again?
One other thing I just remembered: many cocktails are merely ways of covering up the off tastes of inferior liquor, gin being a first, notorious example. Other examples are the cocktails invented during and after Prohibition, when outside of imported liquors, there simply wasn’t much good out there. So there is some irony in sweating over the ice in a cocktail, kinda like insisting on full synthetic oil and Michelins for your Yugo.
Swiftee, I didn’t even know a cigar could keep for 21 years, let alone be smokeable after that. My grandfather actually gave his last pack of (very stale) cigarettes away in a white elephant gift exchange, and the recipient used it to make sure nobody ever bummed a second cigarette from him. I guess it’s all in how the “bottle” is “corked”, huh?
And I’d guess that if indeed new Cubanos are nowhere near what the old ones were, that might have something to do with the fact that raising top quality agricultural products has a lot to do with the knowledge of the farmer–a knowledge that hasn’t been rewarded in Cuba for the past 55 years or so. Soil and sun matter, yes, but so does how the farmer treats the crop.
You’re right, bubba. Soil, sun and the farmer’s pride all play a part.
But what made pre-Commie Cuban cigars so special was the draw. See, they were rolled on the dewy inner thighs of 18 year old, virgin Cuban girls. The supple flesh ensured a firm roll with enough give to allow air to easily pass through.
Unfortunately, the first thing Fidel did was to outlaw virginity in Cuba, and over the years leftists have made virgins past the age of 17 objects of derision and hate, worldwide.
The 1959 Cohíba Espléndido…we’ll never see it’s like again.
My only experience with a Cuban cigar was when my golfing buddy, just back from Australia, gave me one while we were playing. I figured it was going to be wasted on me, but I took it home and relieved the baby-sitter of our youngest child who was then about 18 months. I knew my wife was going to be home momentarily and then I got a wonderful, awesome, awful idea.
There were a couple of PBRs in the refrigerator left from my father’s visit the previous week. I grabbed one of those, grabbed the baby and went out to the back porch. I sat in a lawn-chair, facing the garage door my wife would have to come through to get to the back yard, turned my ball-cap around backwards, got the cigar lit and then put the baby on my right knee, my right arm holding her in place with the PBR in that hand. In the left hand was the cigar, glowing evenly. Sure enough, about two minutes later my wife came through the door, took one look – and nearly choked to death because she started laughing so hard.
That was a great cigar!
Oh. My. God. It’s official were done as a society. Artesian ice?!?!?!
Pappy Van Winkles with an ice ball, natch, (another overpriced thing)
Dude! Them are fighting words. With Pappy and Stagg you get exactly what you pay for – when you can find it!
Just had a locally rolled cigar made with locally grown tobacco and I will stack it up against any Cuban cigar I have ever smoked (having grown up in Canadeh, I had legal and plentiful access).
jpa, I am not a whiskey connoisseur, but I have it from others that fancy themselves connoisseurs that Makers Mark is almost as tasty. Both are wheated bourbons, but the Pappy is slightly higher proof at 107.
As I say, I’m not a huge whiskey guy, and I was focused on the cigar, but the Pappy did not seem to me to be as good a bang for buck as the cigar (what ever it cost).
I’ve smoked several Cubans, and agree that there are plenty of alternatives that are every bit as good.