Homebrew Review: Northern Brewer – Bacon! Smoked Red Ale
Bacon doughnuts, bacon gum, bacon mints, and now… bacon beer? One of the hottest crazes to sweep the nation lately has been bacon-flavored products, and not even beer seems to be able to escape its allure. In 2011, Oregon-based Rogue Ales teamed up with Voodoo Doughnut to release its Bacon Maple Ale, but now homebrewers…
Review: Sammy’s Beach Bar Red Head Macadamia Nut Flavored Rum
You gotta love a first. For his first line extension from Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum, the “Red Rocker” Sammy Hagar has added a Macadamia Nut-flavored expression to this Hawaii-born product. What the heck is this stuff? Distilled from Maui sugar cane, it is steeped with Macadamia nuts and colored blood red (fruit and vegetable juice…
Book Review: Craft Cocktails at Home
As food has evolved beyond grilled steaks and baked potatoes, so have cocktails. It’s now common to see bar menus stuffed with cocktails that involve homemade tinctures, smoke, infusions, foams, pearls of goo, and god knows what else. Molecular mixology is a real thing, and it’s come to the masses. Kevin Liu’s book, Craft Cocktails at…
Review: Wines of Italy’s Stemmari, 2014 Releases
Stemmari is a major winemaker of Sicily, where it produces wines from both native and international varietals, with a ruthless focus on keeping costs down. Most of its wines are available for under $10 a bottle, and some of these are quite good. The naming system may be a little tricky. The less-expensive, single varietal…
Review: 2010 Mt. Brave Cabernet Sauvignon Mt. Veeder
Napa’s Mount Veeder has a new resident: Mt. Brave Winery, one of the most difficult and rugged parts of the Napa Valley. Mt. Brave is focusing on Malbec, Merlot, and (of course) Cabernet Sauvignon, the signature grape of Mount Veeder. This 2010 release is an impressive early effort for Mt. Brave. Intensely dark purple —…
Book Review: The Home Distiller’s Workbook
First things first: This stuff is totally illegal. You can’t distill moonshine, whiskey, vodka, rum, gin, or anything else at home. It is quite dangerous in many ways. If the still doesn’t explode, you could always poison yourself with methanol. Or you could get killed in prison. (Unlicensed still raids are a real thing.) Still…
Review: Slovenia Vodka
Yes, it’s from Slovenia. No, it’s not weird to ask. In this day and age, names mean nothing. Made from 99.9% winter wheat and 0.1% non-pearled buckwheat (“for smoothness”), pot-distilled, and brought to proof with Slovenian Alps water, Slovenia Vodka has a curious pedigree. The money behind this new brand comes from, in part, chef…
Review: Spring44 Straight Bourbon and Single Barrel Bourbon
Arguably known best for its honey-flavored vodka, Colorado-based Spring44 is jumping onto the whiskey bandwagon, with two new expressions of straight bourbon whiskey. As you might expect by their sudden appearance on the market, both are sourced whiskey from Kentucky (not Indiana), brought down to proof with Colorado water, and bottled in individually numbered bottles.…
