Annals of the Bar

[Splificator]

Pardon the shameless self-promotion, but I'm now writing a biweekly column for The Faster Times that might interest some of the--how do I put this--more detail-oriented forumites. It's about bartenders, barflies and their shared history, based mostly on bits and pieces from my archives.

Topics to date include Jerry Thomas's second book, the career of Henry Ramos and what the swells were drinking in 1916. Coming up next: shooters.

(And please note that I'm only responsible for the Annals of the Bar part, not the aggregated stuff it's lumped in with).

[KatieLoeb]

David:

I've got a short menu of savory oyster shots at my bar that are made with house infused spirits with an oyster at the bottom. Interesting to you? Drop me an email and I can 'splain better...

[Chris Amirault]

Dave, how are you deciding what to include and exclude? I've a keen appreciation for your skills as a researcher and archivist, but I can well imagine you have several orders of magnitude more stuff than you need! What are you aiming for with these pieces?

[Splificator]

Katie--

While those shooters sound divine, they're about 30 years too young: my focus will be on the birth of the shooter, back in the pukka-shell and Pacer years of the late 1970s.

Dave, how are you deciding what to include and exclude? ... What are you aiming for with these pieces?

Boy, I wish I knew!

Seriously, I'm not aiming at anything systematic; it's just a way to move some of the more interesting information I've come across from the inbox to the outbox, and perhaps to revisit some of the stuff I wrote about in Imbibe! in the light of new information.

[haresfur]

Katie--

While those shooters sound divine, they're about 30 years too young: my focus will be on the birth of the shooter, back in the pukka-shell and Pacer years of the late 1970s.

Dave, how are you deciding what to include and exclude? ... What are you aiming for with these pieces?

Boy, I wish I knew!

Seriously, I'm not aiming at anything systematic; it's just a way to move some of the more interesting information I've come across from the inbox to the outbox, and perhaps to revisit some of the stuff I wrote about in Imbibe! in the light of new information.

←

I'd like to see a good summary of the whole triple sec, curacao, Grand Marnier history. I know we all love Contreau now but is it what was meant in those early recipes?

[Splificator]

I'd like to see a good summary of the whole triple sec, curacao, Grand Marnier history.  I know we all love Contreau now but is it what was meant in those early recipes?

That topic is so big, so confusing and so defended by entrenched positions that I'm not going to attack it anytime soon. In the meanwhile, there's a good deal of discussion of this topic over here at Chanticleer Society.