Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

10,000 people. Take a second and let that sink in. That’s really not that long ago, guys. Your grandparents were probably alive while this was happening. We can’t forget: there are ALWAYS people who not only dislike other people drinking but are willing to KILL to keep you from drinking. They are weird, scary people, but they are also weird, scary people powerful enough to get Constitutional Amendments passed!

But it’s ok, everyone has calmed down since then, and nothing like this could ever happen again, right? Right.

You guys, it’s happening! Tomorrow! Sorry for the short notice, but I didn’t get much notice myself. Feb 6th from 1pm-9pm, starting at Limerick Junction in Virginia Highlands. Click the poster for more info or go here. It’s $10 to participate, there’s drink specials at each location, and all proceeds go to benefit Red Cross for Haiti relief. So throw away your dignity and traipse about VaHi like a drunken fool…for charity, of course.

A Burger King “Whopper Bar” concept restaurant (whatever the hell that is) in South Beach Miami will start serving Big Three* beers for $4.25 a pop, or about $2 added on to the price of a combo meal. I think this will be a good thing, thought it will probably depend on how well it does to see if it catches on. Liquor licenses ain’t cheap, so hopefully this will do well and justify that cost. If it works, it could open up the floodgates to chains doing this nationwide, and eventually (hopefully) carry local brews as well.

Just imagine that day in the future, teleporting to your local Wendy’s Xtreme to pick up a spicy-chicken pellet and hover-fries alongside a frosty Dogfish Head Cyberhopped IPA. That is, if our robot overlords let us. Damn those robot bastards!

USA Today via We All Scheme

*Bud, Miller, and Coors. AH-NO-DUH.

Amen

Oh that Rumdood, so dreamy! Remember, it’s a limited product, so who knows how much longer it’ll be on the shelves.

I don’t even need to make a joke, here’s what this video is: A group of people who clearly have nobody left in the world who loves them, while tailgating, decide to construct and use a beer bong made from a black mannequin, with the end coming out of the crotch. A man in a Santa suit proceeds to ring a bell and feed a beer through the bong to some drunken yahoo.

I’m all for drunken tomfoolery, don’t get me wrong, but there is just something dark and disturbing about this that just doesn’t sit well with me AT ALL. This is a highly premeditated act of incalculable stupidity and I just can’t support it. Sorry weird yahoos, you’re on your own with this one.

via :: Busted Coverage

Round One: Nose

Chivas 18: Picking up some chocolate and caramel. I don’t know how this is possible, but it smells smooth. Before I have even tasted it, I can tell it’s going to go down easy. I get a little bit of a woody scent as well, but not much.

Johnnie Walker Blue: Smells very sweet, lots of honey and some vanilla, with a bit of dried fruit. I highly doubt that it’s going to taste this sweet, but it’s a pleasant nose.

Round Two: Palate

Chivas 18: Warm toffee and honey, with just a little bit of smoke/peat. It would be easy to go for a big peaty blend to try and seem more complex, much like some craft beer brewers who go overboard with hops and mistake big hop flavor for a fully realized product. By limiting the smokey flavors to the background, Chivas gives the other flavors a chance to be noticed and gives it a greater overall complexity. And man, the finish on this thing is unreal. It just keeps going and going and going. I like this a lot.

Johnnie Walker Blue:  What? Are you sure this is a scotch that sells for over a hundred dollars? This is so…BORING. There’s a decent amount of peat (though nothing like a Lagavulin or Laphroaig), some sandlewood, and that’s about it. It’s almost structured more like a single malt, but I can tell you at least a dozen single malts (that cost a fraction of the price) that I’d rather drink before this. I’ve had every other color label of Johnnie Walker (red, black, green and even the elusive gold*) and with the exception of the black, I’d rather drink any of them over the blue. Maybe it’s because of the hype that I’m so disappointed, but this just isn’t a $150 scotch. Just to be fair, I went back a day after I first tried it and gave it another shot, drank it both straight and with a touch of filtered water…still unimpressed.

Look, I’m no Dr. Scotch over here, but I’ve been to enough formal tastings and Lord knows I’ve drank enough to fairly judge a scotch. While Johnnie Walker Blue is a fine scotch, it’s not worth the price and pales in comparison to the Chivas 18, which is a far more complex and interesting scotch.

Winner: Chivas 18

*Though I’m still working on the purple

]]> http://www.drinkplanner.com/2009/12/16/showdown-chivas-18-vs-johnnie-walker-blue/feed/ 3 http://www.drinkplanner.com/2009/12/03/craft-beer-free-music-get-some/ http://www.drinkplanner.com/2009/12/03/craft-beer-free-music-get-some/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:51:12 +0000 DrinkPlanner http://www.drinkplanner.com/?p=1768 So here’s the scoop, Beer Advocate, the COLOSSUS of beer ratings, has partnered with music label Suburban Home to bring all of us a sticky-sweet FREE music sampler with 22 tracks guaranteed to sound like music! And it’s all done in the name of craft beer. Check out this badass shirt they’re selling!

I like it. If you’re me, (and I know I am) both of those things are true! It’s a pretty great shirt. I can’t vouch for the free music, because I haven’t listened to it yet, but you can’t beat that price. Also, I have no idea what kind of music you like (I stopped reading minds years ago) so I can’t even make an educated guess. It’s worth at least one listen-through though, right? Of course it is. And as yet another super-bonus, Suburban Home will give you a 12% (12%? Sure why not) discount off of anything in their Vinyl Collective store if you use the code “BEERADVOCATE“. I’ve heard it stands for Battered Epileptics Eagerly Roughhousing Appalachians Diabolically Obfuscating Couples’ Artistic Trebuchet Education. SUPPORT THE CAUSE!

Whatever, go download some free music already. And of course, drink craft beer!

The Lowdown: Riesling is traditionally grown and produced in Germany, and Polka Dot is no exception, hailing from the Pfalz region. Though there are dry versions out there, Riesling is typically a pretty sweet wine. I know this going into it, I’ve had Riesling before, and I’m not planning on giving it a bad rap just for being sweet, that’s dumb. “Oh dear, I had no idea this limoncello would taste of lemons! Nobody warned me! My delicate sense of taste has been irreparably damaged. F+.” I would be a jerk if I did that. The sky is blue, grass is green, Jeff Dunham isn’t funny, and riesling is sweet. FACTS OF LIFE. Moving on…

The Whiff: Lots of fruit scents coming out of this wine, which is to be expected. Pear, green apple, and maybe some apricot in there. If it tastes like it smells, I can see how this would pair well with Thanksgiving food. A fruity, cold, biting sweetness to cut through the hearty gravy-slathered turkey and stuffing and everything else. I get it.

The Taste: It’s sweet! No duh. It’s also very crisp and clean, downright refreshing even. The low alcohol content (10.5%) makes it very drinkable. Not particularly complex, pretty much apple flavor all the way. It’s basically like biting into a big green apple. I mean, I could probably pick some other fruit flavors out of there if I tried, but the one you’re going to taste and notice is apple, because it is FULL ON. Just to be clear, this tastes like actual apples, not that nasty syrupy retch they put in appletinis.

Huh, I was just poking around the Polka Dot website (wordplay!) and saw they have a whole section of Riesling cocktails. If I’d seen that sooner, I’d definitely give one of them a shot, but alas…the bottle, she is empty. If you’re interested in that kind of thing though, go check it out.

Would you drink it again? Indeed I would. I think it would be great for Thanksgiving or any big hearty meal like that. You know how when you’re eating a big plate of food, especially holiday food all covered in gravy and mixed and mashed together, and it’s great, but after a while it all kind of tastes the same and you need a taste break? This would be a great taste break, a light fruity contrast to the rest of the meal so you can dig in and get back to shoveling Thanksgiving WIN down your throat.

Would you recommend it? Yes. I’d probably even go as far as to try and convert some anti-Riesling folks with the Thanksgiving thing. Not that I would keep holding Thanksgiving dinners to prove the point, I’m not a MADMAN, but I would use the idea to win them over. As I said, there are dryer versions out there, so maybe I’d start with that if they were being buttholes about it.

Overall: A solid, if not particularly complex Riesling that demonstrates what it means to appropriately pair wine and food. A-

YIKES. That could not be any closer. It also goes to show that if you’re drunk, you don’t have to be driving to nearly kill yourself. Have a safe weekend everyone!

via :: Roger Ebert