The Pegu Blog

OK, I think about cocktails (and limes) a bit too much at times. And I’ve been jealously stewing about Tales of the Cocktail this week. But is that an excuse for this level of silliness on my part?
Glenn Reynolds posted this headline last night, GLOBAL COOLING WITH A TWIST, of lime: ‘Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater….’ The article he references is a rather speculative idea for carbon sequestration, but your humble Pegublogger was halfway through said opus before he stopped being outraged that someone was considering dumping billions of tons of perfectly good garnish into the ocean!

That’s lime, not Lime!

It is wise to bring some water, when one goes out to look for (drink).
Arab Proverb

If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water.
Bulgarian Proverb

Est in aqua dulci non invidiosa voluptas.
Ovid

I think I alluded to this before, when talking about ice, but to have a really great Basement Bar (or Garage Bar, or Shed Bar), it has to be a wet bar. About the only absolute I will issue in this whole series is that you must have running water in your bar, or you might as well not bother.
Running water means both faucet and drain. The stuff that passes between them is really more important as hardware, than as software (as Alton Brown would say) to your bar. Water goes into a lot of cocktails (usually in crystalline form), but it really makes your Basement Bar functional by washing things.
Now, if your bar is a place to put your kegerator, and you just pull the tap into plastic cups, then fine—forget the sink. But quit reading this blog and get your info from Man Caves on DIY (not a bad show, mind you, but more for the brew crew than us cocktailians).
If you mix a lot of cocktails, then you will be producing a lot of washing.

• You will have cutting boards and knives and squeezers for fresh juice.
• You will have fine glassware. You will have pitchers, and shakers, and bar spoons, and jiggers.
• You will want to eat at your bar, so there will be plates and silverware.
• You will have drinks that you just had to try out that, once in the glass, will taste like stale sweat and smell of feet. (Yes, even the likes of you, Keith Waldbauer, have mixed up a feet-tini or two in your day. Don’t deny it!)
• You will have lots of sticky surfaces.
• And you will have lots, and lots of used ice!

Without running water, you will have a lot of schlepping to do. A lot. Like, too much, ya know? No great bar can be great if it is a pain in the ass to use. With a sink, all your liquid waste goes right down the drain, and you have plentiful water for cleaning and washing. And you can say your bar has everything, even the kitchen sink!
Moreover, once you have gotten a sink into your Basement Bar, you have most of the infrastructure in place for three significant upgrades.
The most important is some kind of automatic ice prduction. I’ll avoid repeating myself about how important this is, and just refer you to my award-winning post on ice.
The next thing to consider is an InSinkErator, or similar waste disposer for your sink. These are a nice option, and can be bought for a very reasonable price. What is also nice about this inexpensive luxury is that they can be easily retrofitted later. If you have the budget, put one in to begin with. If you don’t, keep it in the back of your mind.
The last option is a true luxury, but having installed one in my bar, I can honestly say it was the best investment I’ve made in a while. I am talking about a real dishwasher.

I’ve already outlined a lot of the stuff you will need to clean in your bar. A sink and a scrungy will clean them all, and easily so, if you keep on it. Leave the dishes aside until an evening with friends is over (and who wants to scrub when you could be talking about The Celtics, Obama, Aviations, Sex, Literature, Poker, or Sex), and you will find a chore waiting for you. If you have a dishwasher, you just push a button and your troubles largely go away. OK, it isn’t absolutely that simple, but in relative terms it is.
Dishwashers come in an incredible variety of sizes and levels of price and performance. There are half-sized machines, cabinet drawer devices, table top models, and full-sized, ordinary dishwashers. When I was first designing my Basement Bar, I worked under the assumption that I would go with one of the narrow or drawer-sized models, in order to save space and money. Don’t waste your time with this assumption too! If space is at an incredible premium for you in your planning, then the smaller units might be worth considering. But not only won’t you save any money on a smaller model, you will likely spend more! Save yourself some money and enjoy the added flexibility and utility of a 24″ model. In fact, go that way even if space is a problem. Just repurpose your dishwasher as a cabinet, and store your glasses there full-time. Your dishwasher is a cabinet that washes the glasses you put away inside!
A more important decision you should make, if you want a dishwasher in your Basement Bar, is whether to get a low or high-end model. If your budget makes any dishwasher a stretch… well, a Brazillian off-brand dishwasher is better than no dishwasher at all. (Note: A really low-end dishwasher will be hard on glassware. Keep your barware plans in mind when making a decision about a dishwasher.) But if you have room to maneuver, there are some circumstances where a high-end unit from a company like Bosch might make sense.
The chief advantage that the more expensive machines possess is: Silence. Shhh. Hear that? No you don’t. Is it worth the 400-600 dollar increase for a few decibels? Maybe. Think of how you will use your Mantuary. Will it also be your card room? Your yoga studio? Your home theater? Your love shack? If you will be spending a lot of time in your Basement Bar for any such purpose, you won’t be able to run a standard dishwasher while you are down there.
More expensive machines will often have a few other nice features that can save a few bucks on energy and water. A glassware setting, or a top rack only cycle can be very handy and good for the environment.
A dishwasher is a big decision. Don’t dismiss it or jump into it without thinking through the rest of your options.
Oh, and one last thing about washing up: Cocktail glasses should not go in the dishwasher! They probably won’t fit properly anyway, and even if they do, machines are murder on these most delicate of glasses.

Happy iPhone Day, Mk. II! (A day late)
OK, I had planned for this post to go up yesterday, on the day Maggi and I, along with a certain number of others, picked up our new G3 iPhones. I thought the Apple Store employees did a great job, but the coming of the iPocalypse cost me the time I had intended to spend finishing this post. At any rate, here it is!
(Updated. I intend to update this post and bump it each time someone tells me about a new directory, rather than doing new posts.)

In honor of the refresh of the Greatest Device In Human History (your mileage may vary), I thought I’d do a quick review of the cocktail databases out there that are formatted for use with your iPhone. I’ve found four so far, of various quality. If you know of any others, please let me know!
Note: All of these are websites. The App Store does not appear to have a cocktail database. Yet.

We shall start with the iPhone version of Your Next Drink. This iPhone front end has an admirably sparse design, which suffers from a single, serious/minor flaw: The Search button is placed in the header, and I had completely written this review before I noticed it even had a search feature! The parent site, Your Next Drink (Droogle.ca) is pretty cool, and I had not seen it before. It looks to be a potential serious challenger for cocktaildb.com and I’ll look into it more later. But the iPhone site is a little underfeatured. You can get a listing of the top rated cocktails, in one massive alphabetical list, which isn’t very helpful. Or you can get a random cocktail recipe or random shot (this option is inexplicably recommended). There are no ads on the main page.
Bottom Line: Useful, with what appears to be a pretty substantial database behind it. The design is a little hinky, and not very visually interesting. On the upside, YND has three, count ‘em, three entries for the Pegu, so it gets a basic thumbs up around here, just for that!

Online Bartender, by Amir Meshkin is the iPhone front end from Shots on Us. First off, it uses some very spiffy iPhone-esque animation and design features. The menus animate as they load in, and the feel of navigation shows that Amir is probably an Apple guy. The search feature is right up top and works nicely. The browse function is what is most iPhone-like, but demonstrates that a slick GUI is not necessarily useful. You first choose a base spirit from the list on the front page, a list with some odd choices. I was unaware that Absolute Citron deserves equal billing with Vodka, Gin, Rum, and Scotch. Once you choose your first, you are than provided with a multi-page list (with lots of inexplicable duplications) of a second ingredient. After that, you are given a list of cocktails that you can make with these items. It all looks great, but works clumsily. There is a block of Google Ads at the bottom. They don’t appear unless you scroll down. The parent site, Shots On Us, uses the same browsing methodology.
Bottom Line: I want to reward a site that obviously puts so much into making their iPhone Safari front end look so much like a standalone app. But it just doesn’t work very well. The database does include a good Pegu recipe, so I want you to at least check it out!

Pocket Bar-Mobile is almost a demo of how to make a web app on the iPhone. The owner, Vishal Seth, is a programmer. He boght an iPhone and wanted to try out the developer technology. He must be a cocktailian, since he chose to make an iPhone-delivered database of drinks. The search function is clean and well placed. I don’t know where his database of drinks comes from, but it is pretty good sized. He gives you a list of most popular drinks, and most popular searches. A little fun can be had with the latter…. There are no ads, but he does give a paypal addy for donations.
Bottom Line: The database seems a bit thin and wonky. It includes drinks like the Red Headed Slut, but not the Aviation. Oh, and no Pegu! Get with the program, Vishal!
The last drinks reference is the Cocktails portion of iPhone Plaza, a suite of little web apps for the iPhone.
The app looks OK. There is an effort made to include some graphics elements to dress it up, and it has a bold appearance. There is no direct search function, which holds this one back. It does have a lot of options and specialty lists, such as low-calorie drinks, a random drink function, and uniquely on this list, a section on Wine. The drinks database seems reasonably extensive, but has some squirrelly entries (see what they have to say about the Corpse Reviver.) The bottom of every page has ads, and there is a donate button as well.
Bottom Line: There is lots of other stuff for the iPhone (of varying utility) here to use–lots of functions within the cocktail portion as well. As I said, there is extra effort to make things look graphically interesting, but did they have to make it look like a Windows ‘95-era application? Oh, and no Pegu! (I did use the included submission form to hopefully correct this.)

One final note, thanks to the various fellow cocktail bloggers, whose superior photography skills I ripped off to make the graphic at the top of this post. A cookie to the first person who can tell me all the blogs involved!
UPDATE 1: Jay, of Oh Gosh!, points out in the comments that this post has Extra, Doug-Can’t-Competently-Search-The-Web Goodness, in that CocktailDB had an iPhone-native App ready to go on Day One. See the next post for a full review of this excellent product.
UPDATE 2: Jimmy, over at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour, points out that he has updated his Daily Cocktail feature to look, feel, and work iPhoney. I usually ignore daily, random cocktail features, for two reasons. Personally, I am kind of a coward about new cocktails. I just don’t have the guts to take a breath and mix up something the Fates have decided would be good for me. And most daily or random drink functions simply pop out one recipe from a giant database, leaving a lot of variability in type, quality, source, etc. Jimmy’s does a bit more, by doing less. He apparently hand-picks his recipes, and I respect his judgement. (So should you.) Further, he adds a bit of actual content by providing a link to something interesting written out here on the web about each drink.
Bottom Line: It looks and works well on the iPhone, and unlike most of these sites, looks good on a regular browser too. Very limited content, but that content is extremely strong. No adds, only a link to Jimmy’s place. Oh, and no Pegu yet!

OK, so as I said, I’ve been paying a little more attention to Bourbon lately. Today I ran across a delicious new way to employ Bourbon, Maker’s Mark to be specific. Use it in Ice Cream! We were browsing for lunch down at Columbus’ North Market and came across…

Hey! Not to interrupt, but why aren’t we at Tales of the Cocktail?

Not to interrupt? I think you are. I’m trying to write about ice cream here.

My question stands.

Because I can’t afford the time or the money, OK? Especially the time.

But I really wanted to go!

Then you go. Tell me about it when you get back.

You’re joking right? I’m a sock puppet! One part of the job description is that I’m always mysteriously exactly wherever you are, even though we are, of course, completely independent people.

Well excuse me! I’d love to be down there, destroying my liver, watching demonstrations on making 80 proof marshmallows, and generally drunk-blogging up a storm. But as I said, I can’t afford the time! Even if I hadn’t just spent twelve days in Orlando, Summer is not a good time for travel for us, except for business.

It’s the schedule! That’s it. They probably chose that date just to make it hard for me, er, you to attend. The schemers!

Please, I’d never suggest such a thing. I’m offended you did.

Sorry, I appreciate your modesty on the subject. I just think it is so darn irritating!

Are you done bitching?

I don’t know. Am I?

Yes.

Oh wait! I forgot. I was talking about ice cream. We have a local ice cream maker here in Columbus called Jeni’s Ice Creams. They make a lovely selection of specialty flavors, most including some unusual ingredients, such as Queen City Cayenne, Wild Berry Lavender, and the flavor that started this train-wreck of a post, Maker’s Mark Buttered Pecan. I love Butter Pecan ice cream to begin with, and even have a good recipe for making it myself, but this really caught my eye. Jeni’s description says it has a big Bourbon punch, but this (fortunately) overstates things. You can taste the Bourbon, but it does not stand out. Instead, it melds perfectly with the toasty nuttiness of the buttered pecans. It is some delicious stuff.
The only problem with this is that now I have things to do. I need to try this with my own Butter Pecan recipe, and I hope I get the amount of Bourbon right the first time, or I’ll weigh 200 ponds before I get it right. Also, I think that a bigger lesson to be learned is that Bourbon makes a great backup singer to the kind of nutty, sugary flavors in this ice cream. There has to be a dessert cocktail or two in here.

Maybe it’ll keep you mind off all the fun you are missing in New Orleans!

Oh, shut up.

Sigh. Why bother? Machines can make cocktails for us, and ever so elegantly!

Gaze on that, all ye professional mixologists and despair!

Or not.

My last post detailed the iPhone-formatted web drink directories that I could find. I mentioned that no one had yet come up with a native iPhone App, but that I anticipated on real soon now. Fortunately, Jay from Oh Gosh! (possessor of the planets best URL) left me a comment that The Future Is Now.

Behold Cocktails, the iPhone native App from CocktailDB. I can’t believe that I missed this when writing my first post. Sorry, Ted and Martin! In my defense, you don’t have a link to this App anywhere that I can find on your main site! I did look.
Let me say right up front that this is a great piece of software. Of the stuff I’ve looked at and downloaded so far from the App Store, the $9.99 for Cocktails is the best value. Only WeatherBug seems more indispensable to me so far, and it’s free. Further, Cocktails excels over its Web App cocktail competitors in a variety of ways.
First, being a native App is very valuable here. Whether you are on a Beach, a Boat, or in a Basement Bar, you will often not have an available wireless or cell connection when you want to mix up a batch of Bahama Mamas. Cocktails stores its database on the phone. They can also add a lot of features that would be impractical with a compressed iPhone web interface, or even a full-blown web interface for that matter. Finally, things are a lot faster and more responsive with a local App. Incidentally, none of these advantages would matter is the App wasn’t technically well-designed and written. Ian Baird of Skorpiostech has done a bang up job with Cocktails. Thanks Ian.
Next, let’s talk about some of the interface advantages Cocktails has over some or all of the Web Apps I detailed yesterday. First, the interface is completely iPhone-like, not a facsimile. The search box and browse functions look and feel and work just like the iPhone Phonebook. The menubar on the bottom looks just like iTunes. I don’t know whether this is all a product of Our Maximum Leader Steve Jobs’ iPhone SDK, or whether Ian is the kind of programmer who both understands the value of Apple’s Human User Interface Guidelines, and has the skill to use them. My guess is a lot of both. And as I said before, the features Cocktails implements with that interface are very nice. I particularly like the Favorites function. When you want to mark a recipe as a favorite, you simply tap the star at the bottom. A dark star watermark appears in the parchment-like background behind the recipe. Furthermore, a yellow star appears in the drink directory under the icon for any favorite drink, so it pops out to your attention nicely if you are browsing. Of course, there is also a separate Favorites list to browse as well. It’s gee-whiz kewl and understated at the same time. Very cocktailian.
Lastly I ought to say something about content. Most of what I’m going to write here are quibbles or questions. That is because we are talking about CocktailDB’s entire database here. If you are experienced with the online cocktail world, those words should be enough. If you are just getting into things, then you just need to understand that CocktailDB is the Gold Standard of web cocktail references. CocktailDB’s database is huge, easy to use, and 98% crap-free. (No Screaming Red Orgasms here.) It is well organized, and the iPhone version is, if anything, even easier to use than the online full website. The only glaring area of omission is that there is no Tiki category, plenty of Tiki drinks, but no way to search for the genre. Also, Cocktails has no recipe submission function. Finally, I see nothing about how, where, or when the locally stored database can and will be updated. I’m assuming this won’t be too hard, if they are committed to the project. So go out and buy a copy for your iPhone. We should reward good work like this, and it’ll make sure it’s worth their while to keep it up!

{Somehow I posted this originally as a Page, rather than a Post. I nearly convinced myself I was insane when I didn’t see it here!}
I was surprised how much I actually liked the Manhattan I made for the last Mixology Monday, but I still don’t think I’m going to become a Bourbon drinker. I have been at least paying attention to Bourbon a bit more since then, looking for ways to put the Blanton’s I bought to work. It’s hard work, but someone has to do it.
But I recently ran across an article, via my favorite “wire service”, Instapundit, at Knoxnews.com about the boom in overseas sales of America’s Spirit, Kentucky Bourbon. While overall U.S. sales of straight whisky are essentially flat, distillers like Jim Beam, Heaven Hill, and Maker’s Mark have begun, and are accelerating, major expansions in capacity. Wild Turkey (which, like Absolut is owned by Pernod, I was surprised to learn) is essentially doubling its production and expects overseas sales to leap 12% this year alone.
The article postulates that much of the overseas boom can be attributed to the weak US Dollar, but I doubt this is responsible for more than timing and perhaps some acceleration. It seems to me that the Bourbon industry has reinvented itself in the last ten years to celebrate and be driven by its premium end, sort of in the mold of its cousin, the Scotch Whisky industry.

Big deal. Every liquor out there sees fifty new brands a year billing themselves as Ultra-Premium. Are Bourbon’s marketing dudes that much better than everyone else?

I doubt they are any better, since in today’s globalized marketplace, they are probably the same dudes. But I think that Bourbon is more suited to sustaining a premium product over the long-term than many other, especially unaged, liquors. Double especially Vodka.

Your cocktail snob scales are showing! I sure don’t see any signs in the store of premium Vodka slowing down. There’s a new brand on the top shelf every time I stick my nose in!

Maybe so, but I don’t see that lasting another five years. Partly because the market will cannibalize itself, partly because there is only so much space on the shelf. But mostly because there is only so much variation in taste and even in quality in Vodka. Marketing dudes are able to fool consumers for only so long. Consumers can be very easily led for short times, but are pretty darn smart in a free market over the long term. In a reasonable number of years, most of today’s new Vodka drinkers will have settled down to buying a far smaller number of relatively commoditized brands. A smaller number of today’s Vodka drinkers will (re)turn to beer and wine as tipple of choice. The rest will flow into drinking spirits like Gin, Rum, Scotch, and yes, of course Bourbon.
I would suggest that the growth in Bourbon is a harbinger of this. And yes, I’m also calling flat US sales growth. The Bourbon drinkers that made up the base of consumption are dying off. Baby Boomers never drank the stuff. That domestic Bourbon sales are flat is a testament to the rate at which young Americans are adopting it as spirit of choice.
The Knoxnews article ends with a telling quote:

Jim Meehan, bar manager at PDT in New York City, said the same premium small-batch products that made him a bourbon drinker in college are attracting new fans.

“You get a taste for bourbon, you don’t stop drinking bourbon,” he said.

If that trend continues, domestic sales will trend upward soon too.

OK folks, I’m taking extra long to work up my next post on designing your basement bar. Sorry. But Fark.com has just pointed me to another place besides Basements, Lofts, and Extra Bedrooms where you can throw together your own Thoroughly Modern Mantuary.

A secret cave?

A sewer?

Nope. A Shed.
Seriously, this is an excellent place for your Basement Bar, if you have the land for a shed. You can run power and easily run plumbing, without trashing your abode. It is isolated, as per requirements. And Sheds don’t cost a lot. If you live in Minnesota, you could cut a hole in the floor, put it on runners, and ice fish while you mix Pegus.
What could be better?
Back to the blog post I want you to look at. Apparently, in England (where else?) they have a whole culture of tricking out your shed. And they have an annual set of awards to recognize the coolest shed in the land.
Behold the 2008 Shed of the Year!
Let’s see what we got here:

• Ceiling Fan
• Cool Lighting
• 3(!) Fridges
• Comfy Guest Seating
• Running Water

Seriously, if your zoning and climate allow, this is a great place to build your bar!

OK, so this Adventure in a Giant Box of Booze isn’t from the original Giant Box of Booze that I brought home from Spec’s in Houston. Instead, I brought home a Bottle of Canton Ginger Liqueur from a store in Orlando called Total Wine and More. Total Wine isn’t Spec’s, but it was more than enough to make me insanely jealous of Olandans (Orlandians? Orlandonians? Orlandites?) It had a great selection of stuff I can’t get in Ohio, along with a full-time wine tasting bar, and a tall blonde dressed like an Apple Genius Bar employee who was pushing samples of Heineken Light at eleven in the morning.
Canton is a Cognac-based liqueur, infused with the finest fresh baby Vietnamese ginger and lots of other spiffy flavors like honey and vanilla. It ain’t cheap. The bottle is simply beautiful, as you can see in the picture above. The website is attractive, somewhat informative, has some interesting recipes, and is a pain in the butt to navigate efficiently. They do a cute thing with English and French words turning one into the other that is interesting. Overall, the site is worth a visit, but not one to emulate, unless you are trying to satisfy Canada Bi-Lingual requirements in an interesting way.
It took me almost a week after I got home until I could breathe enough to try something interesting with this stuff. As I said, there are several intriguing recipes on the website, so I selected the Domain de Canton Mojito for Maggi to try, since I have a mass of fresh mint right now in the back forty….
DOMAIN de CANTON MOJITO
1/2 part Light Rum
2 1/2 parts Canton
3 lemon wedges
Fresh Mint
Soda
Muddle mint and lemon wedges in Highball glass, add Rum and Canton, then top with ice and soda.
I’m not sure what the Rum brings to the party, other than to give them an excuse to give the drink the marketing-friendly label of Mojito, rather than Ginger Julep, which it seems to me is really more appropriate.
For my tipple, I tried this unnamed cocktail from Michael Dietsch at A Dash of Bitters.
HEY MIKE, WHERE’S THE BITTERS?
2 oz. Cognac
1 oz. Lime Juice
3/4 oz. Canton
1/2 oz. Dry Vermouth
Shake over ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.
My Vermouth is old and tired, but it seems to do the job here nicely. I’d help Michael out with a smart-ass name playing on Vietnam, France, Surrendering, etc., but we Yanks had out own share of ass-hattery in Southeast Asia, so I’ll leave it alone. How’s about a Canton Sidecar?
Anyway, both drinks worked nicely. It appears to be pretty sweet stuff, as the Mojito needed no sweetener at all, and the Sidecar would have been much too sweet had I sugared the rim. There is a distinct spiciness that you don’t feel at first, but which lingers comfortably. Or possibly uncomfortably, as Maggi found the Mojito left her with burning lips about three-quarters of the way through. You might wish to consider your own sensitivity to ginger and adjust amounts accordingly.
My Sidecar was delicious, and seemed quite Asian in flair. Whether it is in fact Asian in flair or if I just was being suggestible, I leave to someone else to evaluate.
Either way, the Canton looks like a winner. I’m going to build on the Asian idea for further experimentation. Canton has a recipe that uses Sake, which I will use as a stepping off point for further adventures!

Well folks, we are back from Das Haus auf Maus. My feet may someday recover.
I’ll have a post up shortly about cocktails at DisneyWorld, but I first wanted to put up this little video clip.

My eldest daughter gets to do something for which, when I was twelve, I’d have happily killed a stranger in their sleep….