Review: Shock Top Honeycrisp Apple Wheat
Do you like apples, like Will’s blonde friend? If so, you’ll love Shock Top’s latest brew, a Belgian wheat ale brewed with honeycrisp apple cider and spices. It smells and tastes exactly how you imagine it will: Tangy apple juice on the front of the palate, then a very lightly bitter, quite sweet finish. Long…
Recipe: Academy Awards 2013 Cocktails
Sunday is the most wonderful time of year for movie stars (and fans). It’s the only time where the media world stops and lavishes the cinematic arts with attention and praise for the well-done, A+ job they’ve contributed to furthering the discourse of humanity over the previous 11 months. In other words, it is time…
Review: LeSutra Sparkling Liqueurs
To call the LeSutra line of liqueurs garish would be a vast understatement. Decked out in pastel colors, emblazoned with tiny fleur-de-lis icons, and sporting oversized metallic stoppers, you don’t walk past the lineup of four LeSutra bottles and not ask, what the heck is that? Launched by producer Timbaland, these are (duh) club-friendly spirits…
Review: Dekuyper JDK&Sons Crave Chocolate Chili Liqueur
Who doesn’t love chocolate? With its new line of chocolate liqueurs, dubbed Crave, Dekuyper isn’t content to stick with just the lowly cocoa bean. Its three new expressions are all chocolate blended with something else: mint, cherries, or habanero chili, as is the case with the version of Crave that we received for review. This…
Review: Tuaca Cinnaster Liqueur
Tuaca is a famed vanilla liqueur that’s been around for hundreds of years in various incarnations. Now it’s getting its first line extension: Cinnaster, which adds cinnamon to the mix. Here’s how it tastes. Strong vanilla hits your nostrils first as you pour a glass, making you wonder how much cinnamon impact there could be.…
Book Review: The Old Fashioned: An Essential Guide to the Original Whiskey Cocktail
Given the recent onslaught of titles dedicating themselves to a single spirit or beverage, the bookshelf of the cocktail connoisseur may find itself with a little less room to spare these days. Thankfully Albert Schmid’s paean The Old Fashioned is compact enough at 110 pages to fit right in, leaving room for those massive wine…
Review: Anchor Distilling Hophead Hop Vodka
Cigarette smoke. That was the first thing that hit me when I took the sniff of Hophead Vodka, Anchor Distilling’s highly talked-about spin on the classic spirit. Hophead doesn’t smell like cigarettes, though. It just reminds me of them. The hops-infused vodka smells exactly like what it proclaims on the bottle — hops and vodka…
Review: Single Malts of That Boutique-y Whisky Company, Batch 1
That Boutique-y Whisky Company isn’t something I made up. That’s really what it’s called. This oddball label (again, I mean that literally, as the labels have comic book-style drawings on them) is being used for a new line of independent bottlings of single malt Scotch whiskys. Like most single malts, these whiskys are a blend…
