If you're into thinkin' and drinkin'

Monthly archives for June, 2015

Episode 47: Out of Our Skulls – The R...

If someone handed you a drink and told you it was called a Rattleskull, it would probably make you pause for a second, right? How could you not assume that you are about to drink something with the sole function of delivering blackouts and hangovers. Rum, brandy, and porter is surely no light concoction, but […]

Episode 46: A Sloe Death – Blackthorn...

Episode 46: A Sloe Death – Blackthorn Cocktail

The Blackthorn Cocktail is a real puzzler. It’s an example of another cocktail that has multiple versions, which is not that unusual, but in this case the resource we’re using has the outlying recipe. The name of the cocktail sounds sinister but it’s nothing more than a connection to a berry bush indigenous to the […]

Episode 45: What’s in a Name? –...

Episode 45: What’s in a Name? – The Bebbo

  Episode #45 I convinced Jay to come to the Brixton and record the history portion of the show. We sat down and Michael made us a couple of Bebbos. Our book tells us the word comes from an Indian dialect and means “toad”.  If that’s true, there better be a reason, however, there is […]

Episode 44: The Greatest Show on Eart...

Episode 44: The Greatest Show on Earth – Barnum (was right) Cocktail

Episode #44 features a popular personality from the cocktail era: Mr. PT Barnum. The name of the cocktail refers to Barnum’s supposed famous saying that a “sucker is born every minute.” But even as we look into this cocktail we can’t verify much of anything and even the attribution of that phrase seems off. Given […]

Episode 43: Who is Barbara West? – Th...

Episode 43: Who is Barbara West? – The Barbara West Cocktail

Initially we all figured that this cocktail history would be a slam dunk. It has a name of a person…it’s named after someone. It has to be easy to find out. We couldn’t have been more wrong. This drink was a complete mystery. Jay could not find any references to it anywhere prior to our […]

Episode 41: A Drink with Count Charmi...

Episode 41: A Drink with Count Charming – Arnaud’s Special Cocktail

  Episode #41 takes us once again to New Orleans to sit down with a lesser known yet still classic cocktail, the Arnaud’s Special. In 1918 a French wine merchant, Arnaud Cazanave, moved to New Orleans to open a restaurant, aptly named Arnaud’s, and live the American dream.  Unfortunately, in the next year Prohibition threatened […]

Episode 40: Jockeying for Position – ...

Occasionally we will find cocktails where you can see a clear linear progression or evolution. This ain’t one of those. In this episode, we tackle the messy and minty history of the Mint Julep. While there is a pretty standard recipe nowadays for a Mint Julep, its early iterations varied from state to state and […]

Episode 38: When Good Americans Die&#...

Episode 38: When Good Americans Die… – The Boulevardier

Oscar Wilde said, “When good Americans die, they go to Paris”.  Not long after, many Americans came to Europe and died in the first World War.  When the war ended many Americans stayed in Europe, often the more intellectual set of writers and artists including Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos.  At the time they were […]

Episode 33: Raising the Dead – ...

Putting the word “corpse” in anything you are going to consume is probably a mistake, but Corpse Revivers seem to have weathered any associations with dead stuff. When you look at the name closely you pick up right away that this cocktail is intended to clear out the cobwebs and get you right up out […]

Episode 32: A Touch of Class – Cosmop...

If you asked the average person to name a cocktail, The Cosmopolitan would probably be on the short list. If you asked the average person what was in it, you might not get past vodka in a martini glass with some other stuff. It is a heavily-recognized cocktail for sure, but it is it anything […]