Happy Birthday, Hip Flask

Today marks The Hip Flask’s first birthday.  In recognition of this special occasion – and to commemorate my past year of blogging – I’d like to take a short look back at a couple particularly special pieces I’ve written over the past twelve months.

By far my post popular post was the first post in a three part series titled “Just Like Old Times?”  I was especially proud of this post not only for its subject, but also because it was selected to be “Freshly Pressed” and linked from wordpress.com, which was no doubt responsible for the astronomical number of views and comments.

Most importantly, I must thank you, dear readers, for your continued thoughts, comments, e-mails, and encouragement.  To that end, if there’s a particular subject, topic, or beverage you’d like to see more of in this space in the year to come, let me know in the comments below.

And finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to return to my original roots and re-post the first words I wrote on this blog.  I have strived to abide by the parameters I originally set for myself; hopefully I’ve kept to my word.

Now, as it originally appeared on July 29, 2010, my first post, “First Things First.” 

First Things First

This is a blog about drinking.  That point should be fairly obvious.  But why another blog about drinking?  Does the universe need another talking head spouting off about how cool you feel drinking $4 PBR cans at the newest dive bar or how swanky that one martini lounge is?

No, absolutely not.

So I’ll attempt to distinguish – this blog is a manifestation of two things, my love of drink and my meager attempt at expressing that love.  Really, it’s simply a journal of my thoughts on an activity I enjoy.  It is completely unnecessary.  Yet its lack of necessity is one of its central tenets.  Much of life is not necessary and is undertaken simply out of pleasure.  And when undertaken, life becomes more pleasurable.

That is my goal – to express my joy in the simplicity of a beverage.  And learn a few things along the way.

In some way, that might differentiate my opinions or thoughts from all those others.  Maybe not.  Maybe you’ll learn something new – an author, a recipe, a consideration, something to make you a little more knowledgeable or thoughtful about this hobby of drinking.  A wonderful hobby shared by us.  And others.  Many others.

We drinkers are an easygoing bunch.  Drinking should be an activity that winds one down.  I’ll keep the blog easygoing too.  But this should be worth your time and mine, so I might attempt an insight from time to time.  But I’ll keep a few common themes throughout.

1.  Fun.  Drinking, like boating, stamp collecting, or baseball, should be enjoyable.  So enjoy your drink.  Sit down.  Slow down.  I don’t believe you should need to fight to get your drink or shout to speak with friends.  But however you choose to drink, it is your choice.  So it should be fun.  Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.

2.  Simple.  Drinking should be easy.  If a drink needs more than two or three ingredients, it probably is not worth drinking, let alone making.  My tastes are conservatively mainstream and not too obscure, although finding something rare or new is always nice.  I’ll do my best to convey all possible information so location and replication is simple as well.

3.  Thoughtful.  I view this blog as an exercise in putting my thoughts and experiences of a favored subject into words.  There are many other commentators.  When my words are insufficient I’ll link to those more savvy than I.  Or perhaps I’ll suggest an article or book for consideration.  Because the only thing more fun than drinking is reading about drinking while drinking.

The possibilities are endless.  Hopefully, I’ll learn a new trick or two, as will you.  Because there’s always a new drink to try.  Or an old drink to try again.  So, sit down some place comfortable.  Loosen your tie.  Take a sip.  Take another.  And read on.

Booze News, 3rd Edition

Booze News returns for another round of entertaining and informative drinking-related news.  This time, the focus is on several stories – both positive and (gasp!) negative – pertaining to your health as you drink during July’s dog days of summer.

Britain’s Daily Mail reports important information for those of us who enjoy a frosty cold beer outdoors: mosquitoes “are 15 per cent more likely to fly towards humans after they have consumed a pint or two.”  French scientists tested their theory in the sub-Saharan African country of Burkina Faso, where “the team used 25 volunteers aged between 20 and 43.  They gave them one litre of their local brew, Dolo, before seeing how many mosquitoes would fly upwind towards them.”

This knowledge of mosquitoes’ preference for boozers is being used to help fight malaria infections.  “The increased attractiveness following beer consumption found here raises crucial issues regarding strategic planning for malaria control…and hence provides insights into the feasibility of targeted interventions.”

Who ever said drinking never solved any problems?

Read the Daily Mail’s article, Enjoying a beer outside ‘makes you more attractive to mosquitoes’

What’s better than a lazy, summer day?  Drinking your way through a lazy, summer day, of course.  And now, drinking red wine on those days might be a particularly good choice, as it “may be able to prevent the deleterious consequences of sedentary behaviours in humans.”  The Atlantic’s Rebecca Greenfield summarizes a Daily Mail article (score two for the British tabloid!) reporting a new piece of positive information for wine drinkers, especially wine drinkers who are lazy.

Resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine, was found to reduce “the negative effects astronauts face when in the weightlessness of space.”  Extrapolating the findings to less-active folk, the study concluded that “resveratrol may not be a substitute for exercise, but it could slow deterioration until someone can get moving again.”  The take-away: another piece of information to haul out when your tee-totaling friends get down on you for your love of drink and a relaxed lifestyle.

Read Greenfield’s Atlantic Wire article, Is There Anything Red Wine Can’t Do?

Finally, the Reuters news wire reports sales of so-called relaxation drinks is on the rise here in the states.  These beverages – with names like “Vacation in a Bottle” and “Just Chill” – don’t contain alcohol.  Rather, their “main ingredients are melatonin, a hormone that is intended to induce drowsiness; L-theanine, an amino acid primarily found in green tea; GABA, a chemical that calms the mind; B vitamins, and chamomile – a plant that often winds up as tea that people drink to help them unwind.”

Their increasing popularity notwithstanding, others are skeptical whether these drinks will actually affect the drinker.  Analysts at Zenith International, a beverage research group based in Britain (again!), believe “levels of ingredients in the drinks may be too small to be effective…if the consumer doesn’t feel the effect, then sales would drop off.”  For me, I’ll avoid the fad drinks; alcohol has been enjoyed, in some form or another, since the dawn of mankind.  So why mess with a good thing?

Read the Reuters article, Relaxation drinks see energetic growth in U.S.

On Technology​, Social Media, and First World Problems

I enjoy reading Susan Orlean’s New Yorker Blog, Free Range.  She is an insightful and intelligent writer who discusses a variety of high-minded topics – not surprising, it’s The New Yorker after all – in an approachable and casual manner.

On June 30, she posted an entry on the blog titled simply, “Problems.”  In it, she lamented that after tweeting a complaint that she “didn’t mind travelling for work but hated having to organize and file my expenses,” her words were mocked by other Twitter users as a #firstworldproblem.  This, Orlean argued, was “peevish; it implied that complaining about filing expenses was an outrageous indulgence since it was evidence that…I lived in a first-world country where there are employed people with solvent employers.”

I agree with Orlean’s response to the mockery: it was indeed peevish and made exactly the implication she stated.  It was also hilarious and spot-on accurate, but that’s not my point.  Instead, her response got me thinking about my use (or lack thereof) of social media as well as the implications said media and technology has on my blogging.

A good friend (and dedicated reader) told me recently that my post titled, “Just Because You Can…” sounded rather whiny, bitter, and crotchety.  It didn’t sound like you, he told me over a few beers the other night; it sounded like someone else was writing.  I took another look at the post the next morning and had to agree – I did sound a bit whiny, bitter, and crotchety.  I also had to concede another point he made: technology wasn’t completely to blame; the Irish software developer “used technology to assist him in solving a riddle. He didn’t Google his way out, he used his brain power to write a program/algorithm.”

So perhaps my continued hand-wringing over technology destroying bar culture is a bit much.  I’ll accept that fact.  But I still believe there’s some benefit to minimizing the role of technology in our daily lives.  Now, I understand the irony of this previous sentence: I am using technology to advocate using less technology (at least while drinking).  My wife enjoys highlighting this on a regular basis and never misses an opportunity to poke fun.

However, several friends have nonetheless encouraged me to connect Twitter to this blog so as to inform my readers on topics such as what I’m drinking on any given evening or where to purchase a particularly tasty or rare bottle.  While I do appreciate these suggestions and certainly don’t discount their usefulness, it’s not my style or purpose.  I prefer (and encourage) instead an atmosphere of leisurely enjoyment and deliberate contemplation while drinking; short and quick isn’t my style.  So I’ve never wanted to integrate a Twitter feed.  Rather, I intend for this blog to be like a favorite periodical: casually read with a cocktail, when your feet are up; carefree and light in substance, but still informative; and hopefully always fun.

Technology, bar culture, social media, blogging: does any of it really matter?  Aren’t these words, just like Susan Orlean’s work expenses, just one gigantic First World Problem?  They are indeed.  Yet for this blog, my own little corner of the internet, they are matters of great importance, matters over which I have spent far too long pondering, debating, and writing.  Writing.  Fully articulating, in clear punctuated sentences; reasoning through my ideas to form rational, logical, and complete thoughts.  Not limited by length, space, or time.  Not abbreviated, off the cuff, or from the hip.

If you’ve made it this far, you likely enjoy your cocktails as you do your writing: carefully and completely prepared, presented neatly with no unnecessary distractions, and enjoyed slowly for full appreciation.  I will continue to strive to make this a destination for celebrating the culture of drink, a luxurious First World Problem, and a place to ruminate over problems affecting only us, drinkers who truly appreciate drink.

Washington​’s Native Cocktail

The District of Columbia now has an official cocktail – The Rickey.

I learned this information on my drive into work early yesterday morning from Bob Madigan, WTOP Radio’s Man About Town.  Mr. Madigan’s brief story explained that “D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans will join cocktail aficionados to read a proclamation declaring the rickey as Washington’s native cocktail and declaring July as rickey month in the District.”

The Rickey, it seems, has been a District resident for some time now.  Mr. Madigan summarized the cocktail’s 130 years succinctly: “The rickey was invented in 1883 at Shoomaker’s, a bar once frequented by politicians and journalists. The J.W. Marriott hotel now sits on the Shoomaker’s site, across the street from the John A. Wilson Building, D.C.’s city hall.”

I hadn’t tried the drink before, which was described as an air-conditioner in a glass.  Its ingredients – at least in the recipe’s modern form – are simple enough: gin, club soda, and lime juice squeezed from half a lime (the lime half is also added after being squeezed).  It could be described as an older, more conservative cousin of the mojito.  And although the cocktail’s ingredients are straightforward enough, the drink’s history is just like the mojito’s preparation: muddled.

For a quick history lesson, I always turn first to David Wondrich, who concurs with Madigan’s story recounting the rickey’s birthplace: “Back in the Gilded Age, Shoemaker’s (sic), on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., was, as the 1893 Baedeker’s Handbook to the United States noted, ‘a drinking-bar frequented by politicians, journalists, etc.’”  Further research indicated that, prior to 1914, Shoomaker’s was specifically located at 1331 E Street, NW, amidst of a portion of E Street known as Rum Row.

Then the story becomes muddled: who, exactly, invented the rickey?

Some say it was created by its namesake, Colonel Joseph Rickey, a lobbyist and gambler who frequented Shoomaker’s.  The Wall Street Journal’s Eric Felten writes that each morning, the colonel enjoyed “two ounces of the bar’s finest Kentucky whiskey in a goblet with a cube of ice, and topped with fizzy Apollinaris water. His friends — and sociable fellow that he was, there were many — soon started asking for their whiskey highballs by calling for a ‘Joe Rickey drink.’”

Others, such as historian George Rothwell Brown, claim it was George Williamson, a bartender (and political power broker) at Shoomaker’s.  In his 1930 book Washington: A Not Too Serious History, Brown states that Williamson prepared a whisky and fizzy water drink for Rickey, but also included half a lime.  David Wondrich agrees with this bartender-centric history: “one day in the 1890s, a bartender at Shoemaker’s handed the colonel a little something he was working on — perhaps the one drink known to mixology that can cut through the Precambrian swamp that is the capital in summer.”

Regardless of creator, everyone agrees the cocktail’s recipe quickly changed.  By the 1890s – only about a decade later – Gin Rickeys had replaced the whisky-based rickeys as they were originally preferred by both Rickey and Williamson.  Not everyone agreed with the new gin fad of the late 1800s and early 1900s: “an aged acquaintance of Rickey’s wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post in 1925, lamenting that the colonel’s ‘name was brought to disgrace by being connected with a decoction of which gin is the component part of chief value in this degenerate age.’”

So, just under a century-and-a-half after its creation, the Rickey is now officially a part of Washington.  Thanks to the City Council for formalizing a long-standing piece of Washington tradition.

Picture courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The End of DIY?

Historic Old Town Alexandria

Crafting your own beverages is a fantastically enjoyable activity; putting the time, effort, and love into your beer, wine, or spirit is rewarding both during and after – especially after.  Microbreweries have arrived as the newest and hottest trend in beer drinking.  But if you’re truly cutting edge, brews from even small, niche market breweries aren’t enough: you need to Do It Yourself.

Unfortunately for city residents like me, my apartment’s square footage can’t handle the requisite equipment to brew, ferment, or distill.  Yet it only takes a short trip to suburban Alexandria, Virginia to solve this problem – where a few local companies provide the equipment, instruction, and necessary space to make your own booze.

Shenandoah Brewing Company and Carafe Wine Makers, both located in the historic Washington suburb, each provide these services.  I had the pleasure of visiting both in the past few years: I made about five and a half cases of Shenandoah’s Honey Weizen; and my wife and I made just under four cases of Carafe’s Barolo-style IL Re Di Vini.

The process for making your own beer or wine is similar: first, after a tasting session, you select your variety and craft it under the staff’s guidance and direction; afterwards, the company stores your creation during the fermentation period; during fermentation, you can design your own label for a special personal touch; and finally, you return to bottle your beer or wine and take it home.

However, I received two emails in June that seemed to signal the end of creating your own beer and wine in the Washington, DC area.  The first, from Carafe, plainly stated as such: “After 4 years of wine making and enjoying this experience with all of our loyal customers, Carafe will be closing its doors this month and going virtual. You will still be able to purchase some of your favorite Carafe wines through thevinoexpo.com which will be coming soon.”

The second, from Shenandoah Brewery, indicated that although changes in management were underway, the staff sounded modestly optimistic: “Prospective new owners should be in place by the end of this month or the beginning of July… but yes, they are maintaining the brew-your-own-beer part of the business.”  The email concluded on a sad note: “the brewery will not be open on Saturday [June 25th] nor will it be open again until 13 July.”

It appears that for now, at least, do-it-yourselfers are without options.  While I too am optimistic the brewery will re-open later this month, I’m realistic enough to understand the financial strains put on such a small and unique brewery by the recessed economy.  If the recent news of Capitol City Brewing’s consolidation is any indication, prospects don’t look good.  Here’s hoping otherwise.