My last post was about DIY Basement Bar Kegerators, allow me to shift gears violently enough to strip the transmission, folks.
Do It Yourself can be fun, but creating the Ultimate Basement Bar to your high standards may be beyond your skills or available time. If you have the available funds (or win them), the folks at Hybrid Space Furniture have the core of your Basement Bar ready and set to go (as of July 1, 2009). Behold, ye constructors of masculine retreats, the Man Wall! (H/T: Uncrate)

Ooooh!
Honey, call the mortgage broker! Time to refinance.

I don’t get it.
It’s a bookcase.

Sorry Guy, women don’t understand.
Sure, it’s a bookcase. And this is a scooter:

Let’s go over what is included with your bookcase. We start off with a 52″ flatscreen, and two smaller tvs (included), with room for one more (shown). With DirecTV, you could watch four courts of Wimbledon or the US Open at one time! Some of you could find supplemental uses during football season…. Next we have a complete surround sound system with DVD and CD changer and iPod dock. In the lower left side we have… a kegerator! No DIY needed, though it doesn’t have a lot of room for a big, ornamental pull.
There is a microwave. If you don’t get a Man Wall, do keep in mind that a microwave is a hugely useful item to have in a Basement Bar.
We round things out with two cigar humidors and some decent wine storage. Really, the only thing these guys don’t have in this system (version 2.0, please?) is a bar front (leaving the Man Wall as a back bar) for cocktail mixing.
I gave these guys a call, and spoke to Vince Caruso about the Man Wall. Look up at the top. You absolutely know you need a 24-hour, live updated sports ticker in your basement. The marquee is self-contained and comes with a year’s data subscription. You can customize it with desired sports, teams, etc. Or you can have it display stock information, in case that’s how you afford the Man Wall. It connects via your home’s wireless internet system and you are golden.
No one you know has this.
The Man Wall comes in four standard finishes: Cherry, rose, black, and steel. Those should cover most design needs, but as they are custom products to begin with, you can get another finish if you need it. Ditto for door styles (and trim, I suppose).
Partner Shawn Matthews has been making these systems for a while now on a custom, one-off basis in Bradenton, FL. He and Caruso formed Hybrid Space Furniture recently to get some economies of scale and market these systems everywhere. They have two other units available as well. There is the Octodesk, which would go great on the back wall of an office or den, and the Multimedia Fireplace, which combines a big screen TV with a no-venting-required electric fireplace. The fireplace, shown below, would be really nice in a condominium.

These last two products are nice, but the Man Wall is the real winner.

If you want to follow this specific series of posts on the Pegu Blog, you can subscribe to our Basement Bar feed here. Or you can just subscribe to the entire blog, with all its brilliant content, here!
Here’s a list of the other articles in this series that have been posted so far:

• Basement Bar Accessories #6: DIY Kegerator
• Basement Bar Design #0: Introduction
• Basement Bar Design #1: Where, What, and Why.
• Basement Bar Design #2: Refrigerators
• Basement Bar Design #3: Ice Supply
• Basement Bar Design #4(a): Essential Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #4(b): Supplemental Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #4(c): Buying Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #5: Water and Washing Up
• Basement Bar Design #6: My Own Basement Bar
• Basement Bar Design #7: Bar Top and Countertop Surfaces
• Basement Bar Design #8(a): Artists
• Basement Bar Design #8(b) More Artists
• Basement Bar Design #8: Artwork
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #1: Lit Backbar Walls
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #2: Holiday Glassware Giveaways
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #3: Beer Dispensing from Heineken and Elsewhere
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #4: Branded Beer Taps
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #5: Pure American Ingenuity
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #7: The Man Wall
• Basement Bar Design Elsewhere in the Cocktailosphere
• Basement Bar Design Elsewhere in the Cocktailosphere #2
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #1: Sheds
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #2: Dangerous Party Invitees
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #3: Irish Pub in a (really big) Box
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #4: Mr. Blendtec, activate the defenses!
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #5: 1800 Tequila's Mancave Contest
• Basement Bar Design, Things to Consider #1: The Bargain
• Christmas Idea: Martini Shaker
• Trader Tiki's Basement Bar in the News

UPDATE: Ack! Apparently my dashboard ate my previous version of this post for no reason. I hate technology…. If this version of the post sucks more than the first, I apologize.

There is a blog I’ve been watching for a while called IKEAhacker. It is all about projects you can do and things you can make by repurposing stuff from IKEA. I’ve been reading it in part because I’m a sucker for IKEA stuff, and in part because I knew that ideas I could use for this blog’s Basement Bar Design series would show up there in due course.
Apparently, I’m psychic….

IKEAhacker’s latest post, Cheers, it’s a Kegerator! shows how to use a few miscellaneous items from the scratch and dent bin at IKEA to dress up an old commercial refrigerator into a very nice cardiovascular system for a beer-centric home bar. You should visit IKEAHacker to see the products they use, and to just look around.
The post is useful, but I thought I’d do a little digging around to help you out with the one thing that Jules doesn’t go into, the tap mechanism itself.
There are lots of conversion kits available on the web that will accomplish this end. At a minimum, a kit will need a keg tap, hoses, a faucet, a regulator, and a CO2 tank. Make sure you get the last, as it is not included in all kits.
There are two different types of pouring faucets: Door mount, and tower. The kind pictured above is a tower, and mounts to the top of the fridge. The larger fixture will make a kit of this type cost about eighty dollars more than a door mount, but a door mount on a short appliance like this would require a suppler back and sturdier knees than I for one posses. If you are converting an old full or apartment sized fridge, go for the door mount.
The cheapest kit I found was a door mount that, with gas tank, would cost about $140 from Beverage Factory.
The tower kits come with either one or two spouts. Since a fridge of the size shown would not likely have room for two kegs, I assume the person who made it went the two faucet route because of appearance, or because it was what was at the store. A base, one spout, tower kit can cost as little as $214 from KegWorks.
There are also deluxe kits that come with better components, and more importantly, with maintenance materials. A tower kit of this nature goes for $490 from KegWorks.

You ought to consider going with a deluxe kit, unless you are a fan of sticky counters and bacteria.

I would be remiss in any Basement Bar Design post if I did not link to myself with some thoughts from previous posts. First off, how can I say this… The handles on the faucets you see on all these kits are… well… plain.

They are boring!

OK, they are boring. Consider investing in something like this to show some personality. And if you don’t have the money, space, or cordless drill needed to go the custom kegerator route, you could still use one of the tabletop mini kegerators you can buy for a couple hundred bucks.
If you are going to go this route, Beverage Factory has a free manual on how to convert a fridge to a kegerator. I’d advise reading it before you even think of buying any components.
If that is to dry for you, or you are still in the decision phase, Kegworks has a great demonstration video, featuring Bob Villa Robert Hess, that is less detailed and complete, but gives a more intuitive view of what this project would take:

If you want to follow this specific series of posts on the Pegu Blog, you can subscribe to our Basement Bar feed here. Or you can just subscribe to the entire blog, with all its brilliant content, here!
Here’s a list of the other articles in this series that have been posted so far:

• Basement Bar Accessories #6: DIY Kegerator
• Basement Bar Design #0: Introduction
• Basement Bar Design #1: Where, What, and Why.
• Basement Bar Design #2: Refrigerators
• Basement Bar Design #3: Ice Supply
• Basement Bar Design #4(a): Essential Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #4(b): Supplemental Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #4(c): Buying Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #5: Water and Washing Up
• Basement Bar Design #6: My Own Basement Bar
• Basement Bar Design #7: Bar Top and Countertop Surfaces
• Basement Bar Design #8(a): Artists
• Basement Bar Design #8(b) More Artists
• Basement Bar Design #8: Artwork
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #1: Lit Backbar Walls
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #2: Holiday Glassware Giveaways
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #3: Beer Dispensing from Heineken and Elsewhere
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #4: Branded Beer Taps
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #5: Pure American Ingenuity
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #7: The Man Wall
• Basement Bar Design Elsewhere in the Cocktailosphere
• Basement Bar Design Elsewhere in the Cocktailosphere #2
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #1: Sheds
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #2: Dangerous Party Invitees
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #3: Irish Pub in a (really big) Box
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #4: Mr. Blendtec, activate the defenses!
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #5: 1800 Tequila's Mancave Contest
• Basement Bar Design, Things to Consider #1: The Bargain
• Christmas Idea: Martini Shaker
• Trader Tiki's Basement Bar in the News

Thanks to Mætenloch, guest posting at Ace of Spades:

A couple of weeks ago, the PeguWife and I made the long but always worthwhile journey downtown to M at Miranova, which I reviewed earlier. Cris, my favorite bartender there, was working (say hi to her a Tales, folks!) and pointed me to her new drink, The Vanilla Bean Old Fashioned.
Both Maggi and I really liked this drink, and given my current obsession with Old Fashioneds I think this is a good time to share it with you. I’ve made a number of these since first trying them at M, and my recipe differs slightly from Cris’s. If you think it is a bit off, blame me and go ask Cris for the original.

The resulting cocktail is rich, complex, and sweet, but not as sweet as it sounds. Maggi declared it to be a delicious vegan eggnog. If those two words make no sense together, like jumbo shrimp or government accountability, just try the drink. Try the drink anyway, it’s delicious.
I will say that I balked at first over putting a full ounce of simple syrup in any drink. I tried it side by side with the full ounce and a half ounce to compare, and learned something. The extra sugar did not make the drink appreciably sweeter. What the extra syrup did do however, was to bring out the flavors of the orange oils and the bitters. I’ve got lots of fun experimenting ahead of me on this effect.

My snarky comments in my last post about scientific studies came back to me this afternoon, as I perused my iPhone at the park.
A week ago I read (and I bet a lot of you did too) an article in the New York Times, entitled Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It. The article addresses controversy over a recent discovered, but uncontested statistical fact: Moderate drinkers live longer than heavy drinkers, but they also live longer than Teetotalers.
If no one contests the fact, why is it controversial?
You don’t follow politics much, do you?
Here is what lots of scientists are saying to argue that the obvious advice that arises from this fact should not be given:

“The bottom line is there has not been a single study done on moderate alcohol consumption and mortality outcomes that is a ‘gold standard’ kind of study — the kind of randomized controlled clinical trial that we would be required to have in order to approve a new pharmaceutical agent in this country,” said Dr. Tim Naimi, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This a completely valid scientific point, but also a terrible basis for debate. How’s it both? Well, the central assertion that correlation is not causation is critical to good science. And that critical rule is the most often ignored best practice in science, by both lay people and scientists themselves. So it certainly is reasonable to say that you should not take this statistical fact alone as advising moderate drinking.
But there are numerous other studies that show more direct causation between alcohol consumption and a variety of specific health benefits and risks. How do we balance them? Dr. Naimi’s suggestion that we employ a process similar to the FDA’s approval process for new drugs is flawed for various reasons. First, as the article notes, the only sponsor for such a test that might allow the results to be trusted by both sides would be the Feds. And they won’t pay for such a process because whichever side comes out behind will hate them. Further, I would suggest that using a process that would reject Aspirin or Penicillin as possessing too many risk factors to be allowed, would certainly find against alcohol. Which is more an indictment of the government’s process of approving drugs than it is of alcohol. The fact is, like everything else on Earth, alcohol has benefits and risks. If we want to know how those sides tend to balance, I’d suggest that we have a study already done, to the goldest of standards, about how those risks tend to balance. The sample size is humanity….
To be fair, the argument Dr. Naimi and some others (don’t you just love when reporters use the phrase some scientists say…?) make against my last point is this:

…the two groups are so different that they simply cannot be compared. Moderate drinkers are healthier, wealthier and more educated, and they get better health care, even though they are more likely to smoke. They are even more likely to have all of their teeth, a marker of well-being.

The problem I see with this distinction is that the scientists seem determined to believe that these sociological differences could have no causative relationship with alcohol consumption. This is of course ridiculous. No one claims that alcohol use can and does change people’s life circumstances, at least in the case of heavy use or abuse. Why should we reject out of hand the notion that moderate alcohol use might actually promote some of those social advantages the researchers say distinguish moderate drinkers?
I’m not saying this is certain, but I contend that the differences they are discussing can’t legitimately be used as control factors since income and education may also be affected by alcohol use. In fact, a Forbes article by Arthur Brooks cites a study that purports to show such a relationship.

Moderate drinkers are richer than teetotalers, too. In 2001 the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics found that light drinkers (one to two drinks a day) had a mean income of $49,000, versus $36,000 among teetotalers. This is a nuanced statistic; drinking may be associated with other variables (like education) that influence income. So the researchers did their best to strip these other causes out. If two adults were identical with respect to education, age, family status, race and religion, except that the first had one or two drinks each night after work while the second was a teetotaler, the drinker would tend to enjoy a “drinker’s bonus” of about 10% higher income.

Is this correlation or causation? Again, who knows? Especially since in this area we are leaving medical science and entering sociology. And sociology ain’t science, guys. Sorry, but it isn’t.
Finally, another article in Forbes (the one I was reading in the park while my kids played on the swings) makes a logical argument that in many ways trumps the entire debate. The article, by Jeff Stier is entitled I Choose Risk. And no, the fact that the term bikini waxing is found in the subtitle is not why I was reading it. Stier’s article is a general condemnation of how we are becoming increasingly, riskily, adverse to… well… risk.
Most of his article is devoted to the fish pedicures, video games, and the aforementioned bikini waxing, but he ends with linking the Brooks article and saying this about the correlation/causation question.

I believe that moderate drinkers have the ability to accept risk (unlike teetotalers) and manage it (as opposed to alcoholics). This is a discipline that they can deploy both at the bar and at the office. The ability to engage judiciously with risk in all facets of life may be a predictor of success–whether it’s part of a career, daily routine or society in general.

So let’s wrap up this rambling post. It is a fact that moderate drinkers happen to live longer than those who drink more or less. There are specific, well established health benefits from alcohol consumption, with more being found all the time. The are specific risks associated with alcohol use as well. In addition to living longer, moderate drinkers make more money, are healthier, and are better educated. Moderate drinking is a skill, employing talents that are valuable for success in all walks of life. And I’ll add that drinking is enjoyable and can improve our quality of life.

I’ll close with a famous quote by Benjamin Franklin that apparently was not quite what is usually reported:

Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.

Via my favorite Guy Oriented Website You (probably) Won’t Get Busted For Browsing, Asylum.com, comes an article from the Telegraph. It proves once again that Britain is the land of interesting alcohol research. (All booze studies in the US come to either or usually both of the following conclusions: Alcohol is the Debbil, or We were unable to prove that alcohol is the Debbil, so we need more funding study to get the goods on it.) The valuable information recovered from this study is: Alcohol goes to the head in six minutes.
Here are the money grafs:

Scientists set out to test the well-known saying that just one drink can quickly go to your head.
Only six minutes after consuming an amount of alcohol equivalent to three glasses of beer or two glasses of wine, leading to a blood alcohol level of 0.05 to 0.06 percent, changes had already taken place in brain cells.

I’ll leave it to you to spot all the peripheral silliness in these two one sentence paragraphs. To me the big question I popped from this was, drinking three beers through a straw while lying on your back in an MRI only leads to a 0.05 BAC?!?!?
Really?
I can think of only three explanations for this:

1. Brits drink really low alcohol beer. Verdict: Not bloody likely.
2. Brits have a different metabolic process from Americans. Verdict: Even less likely.
3. Brits drink small beers. Verdict: Ummm, I dunno.
4. MRI machines inhibit drunkenness. Verdict: Who cares?

Any readers from across the Pond want to help me out on this?

Image does not depict BAC of 0.05.

Anyway, I am aware that the actual study probably was aimed at those chemical changes in the brain, not how fast you get your buzz on, but the scientists’ PR people clearly know how to craft a press release to attract the attention of newspapers (and your humble blogger, apparently).
But what are we to take from this information? What can we do with it? I’m not sure. But the first fact I can think of is that when you slam a shot of tequila or chilled vodka, the wobbly feeling you get instantly is not intoxication, it’s just shock to your tissues. Also, while there is a delay between intake and effect, it’s probably not long enough to accomplish anything useful, so don’t try.
When you combine this the first rule of cocktail wisdom, A cocktail should be drunk quickly, while it is still laughing at you, I think it means you need to wait a while between drinks if you want any meaningful gauge of where you are, drunkenness-wise. Beyond that, does anyone else have a use for this, beyond being a basis for a cool James Bond scene?

Stolen from Failblog.org:

UPDATE: Welcome SFist readers! While I have been in a run of funny pictures and videos lately, there’s much more here to read, please look around!

First off, I recently learned that 1800 Tequila is running a contest entitled Win the Ultimate Mancave. You may enter once per 24 hour period, between now and the closure date of August 15th, 2009. I advise you to not enter, as each entry of yours will reduce my chances of winning. The grand prize is $10,000 which you can use to help you follow this humble blog’s advice on constructing the ultimate Basement Bar.
Since I already possess the Ultimate Basement Bar, I’d probably spend the cash on expensive booze, and video games. The rest of it, I’d just waste.
But I’d like to talk a bit about mancave design as exemplified in the photo atop this post. If you visit the 1800 Mancave contest website, you’ll see an expanded view, with more stuff to the right.
First off, while I’m sure 1800 would disagree, I advise against putting 600 bucks worth of their product out on display in your basement bar. 600 dollars worth of liquor is OK, but not all the same two bottles! Especially not all tequila! In my personal, limited experience, one good party that started in the mancave pictured above would end up with grass stains on everyone’s clothing, a couple of divorces, five jail terms, two of your guests waking up naked in Bozeman, Montana, and most tragically, only 35 dollars worth of 1800 on display. With that caveat, it’s a beautiful, and instructive, layout.
The liquor display shelf is beautifully backlit. There is a large refrigerator (almost an embarrassment of riches), though I quibble with the in-door ice maker, rather than a separate device. There is cool decor in the form of the memorabilia case. The sports stuff shown in the picture is actually a bit sterile (it is a promotional photo), but I like it because it is baseball heavy. If you actually has such a collection of sports stuff, and want to feature it in your Basement Bar, you might want to spread it around to permeate the whole space.
This Basement Bar also has two things I haven’t written about in detail yet, but are both in my draft que: A kicking entertainment center, and very cool lighting. Expect more from me soon on these subjects.
The place where this design falls down is the bar itself! Do not build a bar that is thigh-high, with barstools scaled for my eight-year old daughter. She’s not allowed in your bar.
So, have a good day, and remember not to enter the contest!

That’s it. The modern craft cocktail movement has moved beyond teetering on the edge between fad and movement. All your bars are belong to us.

How do I know?

My 69 year old mother-in-law just called me this morning from Darien, GA. She wanted me to hook her up with a source for orange bitters….

Whew.

I was this close to writing another of my FAIL posts about how Mixology Monday has come again, and all my experiments yielded crap. It’s happened before. Also, it’s come close before as well. Well, it seemed to be happening again this time for real, in a big time way. Everything I had on tap just stank.

The Mixology Monday theme this month is a fabulous one. One that I’ve been looking forward to since Rumdood announced it: Ginger.

I wasted a lot of my precious supply of Canton Ginger Liqueur on several failed drinks. That sucked on several levels.

I tried making some cool dried ginger garnishes with a funky homemade drying rig idea that I stole from Alton Brown. They looked so awful, I trashed them.

My best idea, in keeping with my current exploration of Old Fashioneds, was to try a Ginger Old Fashioned. It suffered the worst fate of all: It was boring.

So I gave up. Another MxMo missed, I said, and decided to work on another post for later. I went back to the lab to work with my bottle of Bols Genever that I was sent for review. That’s when the Watson come here, I need you! moment came.

I intend to do a full review and discussion of genever and Bols in particular soon, but since they saved my MxMo, I’ll do a bit of my best thoughts here and now. Genever is one of those sadly almost forgotten spirits that our cocktail renaissance is allowing to emerge from the shadows of history. Commonly called Dutch Gin… genever ain’t gin. It is the precursor to the London Dry Gin so many love (or loathe) today, but while it is also a gin infused white spirit, it has an unmistakably different flavor and especially aroma. The reason I haven’t written my full review on this fascinating spirit is that I’m still searching for the right words to describe the difference between it and gin. I’m a wordy bastard though, so I’ll get it soon enough.

In the meantime, I have found the drink that I’ll be featuring when I do get to the review: The John Collins, which is a Tom Collins made with genever.

So I rolled down to the basement in a failed MxMo funk to make a John Collins and try to find those words I needed. I was halfway into it when I discovered that I had a problem. I rather contemptuously kicked around soda and seltzer water in a recent post, and the fizzy water gods were angry. I had no bubbly water on hand! I was even out of cartridges for my seltzer bottle!

Words failed me. Well, actually they didn’t. I won’t relate the word I used repeatedly, but you should be able to guess from the suggestion that my word choice was a bit scatological.

Then I looked around in frustration and my eyes were drawn to the word ginger! I recently bought a new six of Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew, to replace the bottles I received from the sample fairy. (This reminds me I need to review that stuff too! I’m so behind.)

I had no carbonation for my drink. I was still steamed at not finding a use for ginger. I was thirsty. This is what we in the fiction writing business call a coming together moment.

THE ANTOINE COLLINS

• 2 oz. Bols Genever
• 1 oz. fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 oz. simple syrup
• Reed’s Jamaican Style Ginger Beer

Mix genever, juice, and syrup in a tall glass. Add ice and fill with ginger beer. Garnish with a broad strip of lemon peel.

I was fully prepared for it to suck. To be swamp water. In short, for it to top off my weekend nicely.

But, it’s good. It is refreshing, spicy, and tart. It shows off the unique qualities of the Bols Genever in a gentle way. It leaves your mouth clean and tingly like ginger does. It makes me smile.

Try it, you’ll like it too.

Now go back to Rumdood’s for the rest of this month’s MxMo ginger proceedings. You’ll be glad you did!