haresfur

If that refers to my post, the answer is, I don't have a clue - I've never tried the stuff. But if any commercial Swedish Punsch products are available in the US, the distribution seems limited and there surely must be some brands that have not been imported. I'd be willing to be flown to Sweden to help with the research, though...

Milk Punch? Dark & Stormy; Campari & soda; rum & orange juice (nice with a sink of grenadine, and at least gets you the vitamin C you must be needing). I think most stirred drinks can be built without doing too much harm. Congratulations on the contributions to the gene pool.

Welcome to eGullet 12BB. I think your list fits because IMO the bitters shouldn't count. Not sure I could live without Campari but, hey, it's your list not mine.

Swedish Punsch?

I can see Sam's point here. Much of the stuff appears to be a solution in search of a problem. It's like they have certain techniques and are trying to apply them to cocktails, whether or not the cocktail world is the right place for them. Sort of "if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail." One of the worst cocktails I ever had was a something or other with a berry foam - sorry, slime on my drink just doesn't work. I do like the idea of the interaction with the drink and bringing in the sound of cracking the egg. I don't like the thought of drinking an old fashioned with sharp shards of ice hitting my teeth. A straw would certainly be needed. On a technical note, the alcohol will eventually dissolve some of the ice until you have a mixture with a freezing point equal to the storage temperature. This could limit how far in advance you could make up the eggs and/or limit you to lower proof booze. Particularly for the Old Fashioned, the tradition of mixing the drink is important, although less so if served to tables. How about freezing the whiskey alone and serving over the sugar and bitters? That way you could still tailor the drink to taste.

I had one of these a few weeks back at Zig Zag when Murray was perfecting it, and it is truly unique! ~Anita Does the above, second post in the thread narrow it down enough?

Well, if you substituted in some brandy, you could call it "Between your Grandma's Sheets" In days gone by you could name it after a popular character of the day, but now you might get sued if you gave tribute to the Caribbean theme and called it the "Johnny Depp". I'm not familiar with Scarlett Ibis. What's it like?

A kid who wants tea and lobster. Sounds like you're raising her right! I have fond memories growing up in Winnipeg of drinking tea that was mostly milk and sugar.

Aw, half the fun is in complaining about the list. The other half? I'd say 1/4 tweaks to check out someplace you haven't been when you find yourself in the right town, and 1/4 the regeneration of fond memories of places you know. And isn't it great that there are now more than 25 cocktail bars worth noting? Probably wasn't the case in 1980.

What would you do: Choices are pretty limited here and as I keep whinging, prices are high. Looking for something for mixing. In the local stores my only rye choice is Jim Beam for $35. They also have Blanton's special reserve single barrel bourbon for $50. The Blanton's is only 80 proof btw (for export only). Mail order, Wild Turkey Rye is $57 + shipping. Other rye whiskey mail order is totally out of my price range. I bought the Blanton's because I was into instant gratification. Just couldn't bring myself to pay that much for Jim Beam. But I am interested in your thoughts on a high rye bourbon vs. Jim Beam rye, or if I just need to suck it up and get the WT.

First thought was Zig Zag is very deserving. Second thought, dang, it's going to be harder to get a seat at the bar. I agree about Portland although my experience is limited to one trip when I was recovering from swine flu and only got to Teardrop. I'm betting GQ reads this forum but just couldn't swing a trip to PDX.

I reported on my adventure with the SanRu here. Today I tried it, substituting Polish mead for the sherry: 1 1/4 oz gin (Seagram's up a little from the original) 1 oz Dubonnet 1 oz Kurpiowski mead build over ice As I did previously, I tasted then added a small lime wedge. This was really spectacular without the lime. After adding lime and finding no improvement (well perhaps a twist would have worked) I added a splash more mead. Yum.

Yes, not good timing for this MixMo but I wandered my way in through the back door. I had been thinking about exploring sherry cocktails, in part because a friend gave me a little bottle of Polish mead that I thought might be an interesting substitution for sherry. But a substitution in what? That will have to wait for another night though, because I'm at my limit. Sherry is daunting since there is such a variety from sweet to dry and all the intimidating oleroso, fino, amontillado, stuff. But my parents were partial to a spot of Bristol cream or Bristol milk, or whatever and as a teenager I was happy to join in a sip if offered. Now I find myself in the land of reasonably reasonable fortified wines, Australia. But that has it's own problems: It is bad enough that cocktail recipes are often vague about what type of sherry to use, but even if specified, how do I translate into the local product? After much head scratching in the liquor store, I gave up and bought a bottle of generic cream sherry, figuring if it didn't do the job in a drink, I could always just hit myself over the head with the bottle. In the old cocktail books, sherry seems to show up mainly in variations of generic drinks and in things like flips, which are out since I'm trying to cut down on the cholesterol. So it was back to eGullet, excuse me, the eGullet Society for Cullinary Arts & Letters, to figure out what to mix. Luckily there is a port and sherry cocktail topic to provide guidance. I say guidance because I tend to find something that sounds promising and then figure out how to come close with my rather spartan liquor supply. I settled on a loose interpretation of the SanRu. I had Dubonnet but no Cherry Heering. No matter, Cascade brewery makes a nice raspberry syrup to add a fruit component. SaRu(ish) 1 oz "cream" sherry 1 oz Seagrams gin 1 oz Dubonnet rouge 1/2 tsp Cascade raspberry syrup build over ice. At that point it was one of those "sequential" drinks: raspberry, then sherry, then Dubonnet. The gin surprisingly hid in the background. But something was missing. Hmm, garnish. There in the fridge was a tiny remaining slice of lime, precious as gold. And that's the thing about lime: you can load up a sour with lime juice and make a nice drink... or you can add a tiny bit of lime to a drink to turn something decent into something special.

McCafe is well established at Maccas in Australia. They usually have at least a separate ordering and serving area at the counter (although you can then usually order at the same counter as the regular food). In many locations the McCafe is at a separate counter in the building. They have coffee, muffins, cakes, and biscuits. The coffee isn't as good as the better real cafes or even as good as Starbucks but is drinkable IMO. That and free WiFi have made me a convert. The ambiance is quite a bit better with even the little amount of remodeling if the TV isn't too loud - but it had nowhere to go but up, eh?

I think Tiki drinks are a good suggestion - fun, easy to drink, and you can pack a ton of alcohol in if that is your wish . I'll probably get slammed for suggesting it, but you can sub in amaretto for orgeat if you don't want to go to the effort of making or acquiring the latter. But if you are going for more "sophisticated" any of the classic sours should work. Nothing wrong with a good mojito, either (and someone who plucks their own mint right off the plant should make anyone swoon). Clear drinks are probably more of a challenge but there are some good suggestions here.

I'd put Barbancourt 5* far up in the smooth category. Maybe you could try a flight of similar rum or whiskys with varying quality and proof. Then let us know if your impression of "smooth" relates to % alcohol or something else (or a combination).

I would try the Tinton again, probably with Calvados. Perhaps some extra stirring because I wasn't quite prepared for the initial sock of the nearly pure brandy, even though I wasn't using bonded. So I suspect the skill of the bartender matters for this one.

A few days ago I tried the Tinton cocktail from Savoy, via eje's blog using the end of my Laird's 12 yr apple brandy and Widbey Island port. It was ok. Then I decided to turn it into a fizzy drink with Henry of Harcort Duck and Bull (hard) cider made from a combination of pink lady and traditional cider apples. I think it would have worked better mixed than using the port as a sink since it was hard to judge the right proportions. So what would this be? Not really a sangaree or a fizz or a shandy. Surely it must have been done before.

I agree, but in my neighbourhood the multinational beverage corporations are making most of their profit off pre-mix cans of Jack & Coke or the like. Talk about your culinary apocalypse...

A design for a scientific experiment is creative and expressive but you can't copyright it. A mathematical proof is creative and expressive but you can't copyright it. A process for diagnosing a disease is creative and expressive but you can't copyright it. A philosophic argument might be creative and expressive but you can't copyright it. A design for say a pair of skis is creative and expressive but you can't copyright it (although you can copyright the graphic you put on top). A computer program generally IMO is not expressive but you can copyright it. Utilitarian photographs documenting an object are not expressive but can be copyright. A book on Birds of the world is copyright but the list that goes into it and the taxonomic system are not. I'd say there isn't a single test of whether something is "worthy" of copyright protection. It is fundamentally a political decision and I tend to agree with Sam that "benefit to society" is a reasonable test, although subject to considerable abuse.

I'm still trying to get my brain around your proposal. Law doesn't work very well with vague boundaries. The recipe of ingredients and instructions for putting them together isn't copyright. The technique wouldn't be copyright - like you wouldn't copyright finger-picking a guitar even if it had never been done before. It seems to me you are proposing copyright protection for "presentation". So the ingredients mixed don't matter but the way the "dish" looks when put in front of the customer does. Is that correct? I still have a lot of problems with that. Would a copyright on the "melon ball" cover all kinds of melon? How about infusing melon with the same spirit and making a sculpture of stacked balls? Stacked cubes? I can't overlook some issues with the way copyright laws have been written and implemented for other areas. The successful litigation over trivial music snippets has been mentioned previously. It is all very well to say a simple cocktail shouldn't be covered but fancy ones should but that isn't the way things have worked out in music. In addition IMO the recent changes to copyright law extending the coverage for decades is absurd. Why should works of art, books, etc. be worthy of longer protection than patents? Then when you consider that people can republish a work with some minor additions and gain essentially exclusive rights, (I'm not an expert, but it looks that way) creative ideas are locked away in perpetuity, stifling creation. Try to get Jerry Thomas' bartenders guide from Google Books. Didn't Google cut a deal with the publishing companies so they wouldn't be sued for something like that where someone has decided to republish (reproduce) it? It's not a case of being against any protection of IP but I am against extending badly written and implemented laws any further. Perhaps, but practically unenforceable. I know of potters who have had designs taken and knocked off by overseas factories. Maybe someone should ask Freeman if he has given up IP rights to the things he creates in his new job. Any bets?

Perusing random old posts... Prichard's cranberry rum over an ice cube is a nice sip. EMP is a big fan of the rum and of Fjord horse on the label.

A lot of people will loose. Bartenders won't be able to make the drinks they invented if they move to another bar. They may not even be able to make variations on those drinks. No one else will be able to make similar drinks. We won't be able to have the vibrant discussions that include recipes. And I believe it is the educated enthusiastic aficionados that really are driving the renaissance of cocktails because they are the ones willing to seek out and pay for a good drink. This hits the heart of the matter. It's the execution that is the real value.

I upgraded the wiring and breaker when I installed my induction range. But I'd upgraded the panel previously. Whether you go over your home's total panel availability depends on your other power requirements. Do you have an electric hot water heater? Electric heat? Will you be turning motors on causing peak demand? An electrician may be able to install a sub-panel for the range and save you a little over having the whole panel replaced. Personally I vote for doing it right. But you really need to talk to a good electrician.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to see him get a cut if some huge chain copied his work. But why would they bother? - the logistics seem impractical and they could sell nearly as many "martinis". Besides, jello shots have been consumed by university students for a long time and spiked watermelon has been around for even longer. It appears that the Surreal Gourmet started making other food look like bacon and eggs over a decade ago (think there was also an app. of honeydew and cantaloupe cut to look like a fried egg). So it looks like he took preexisting elements and combined them in a creative way. I don't know how it would play out in court if the situation were covered under copyright law but I tend not to bet against acres of lawyers.