Cold brew coffee

Just when I thought coffee culture couldn’t get any more precious, cold brew coffee shows up to the delight of coffee snobs and the dismay of pretty much everyone else.

The hot drink equivalent of small-batch spirits, cold-brewed (or pressed) coffee is produced by steeping coffee grounds in chilled or room temperature water for 12-plus hours. 

Hipsters far and wide are queuing up for this new brew, which makes the coffee less bitter (while jacking up my own bitterness) because the coffee beans never make contact with actual hot water. This coffee concentrate can then be heated up and added to water or milk for a supposedly transcendental coffee experience.

Cold brew coffee has been popping up around town, with some bars even offering the coffee on tap or in growlers. This translates into lumbersexuals everywhere coming in their artfully distressed jeans.

I hate to throw cold water on this, but if you need a cuppa joe to get your rocks off, you might want to rethink things. A sweet cup of coffee is a wondrous thing, certainly, but it will never beat out a sweet piece of ass. Sip on that.

(photo: coldbrew.com)

Mixologists

I recently went to a new watering hole, all warm low-lighting and fancy bar menu designed by someone with interesting eyewear and a penchant for Copperplate. The drinks, with the clever names you’d expect from a hipster bar that requires a secret handshake to enter, were made out of exotic ingredients. My pal and I were parched so we just ordered up two Tanqueray & tonics.

No Tanqueray.

No problem. I can roll with a locally distilled and hand-crafted gin.

Minutes ticked by. The thirst mounted.

Finally, our server appeared with a pair of ginger-colored cocktails gleaming in their old-fashioned glasses. “Good news! We have this amazing tonic; it’s made from Peruvian tree bark.”

My face became the visual version of a needle scratching a record. Peruvian tree bark in my gin & tonic. That explained the tea-stained color.

Again, I’d like to think I’m open minded. But hell if it didn’t taste vaguely like cinnamon-laced apple. And it was as flat as Keira Knightley’s chest.

Needless to say, I sent that drink back to South America and gave my best stinkeye to the bartender. Excuse me, mixologist.

Hand-crafted bitters infused with rare herbs. Schnapps produced in a tiny Alpine hamlet only during avalanche season. Drink names that combine the mixologist’s last vacation destination with a weather phenomenon or natural disaster. No, I do not want a Cabo San Tsunami, Amsterdammit! What’s next? Vodka made from Brussels sprouts?

Mixologists are easy to spot. Their plumage comes in the form of a natty vest and they all vaguely resemble Joseph Gordon-Levitt. They have an extensive knowledge of Absinthe and the ruined men who loved her, are judgmental of anyone else’s cocktail-crafting abilities, and rejoice in taking half an hour to make a Ramos gin fizz (which, admittedly, is delicious).

While they follow spirits trends, they pride themselves on being an exhaustive repository on all things boozy. If you want the backstory on that 15-year-old Calvados, the mixologist is your man. But if you want a drink without a side of “I know better; let me make you a new and improved cocktail,” head to your closest dive bar. You can get pissed drunk instead of pissed off.

(photo: startribune.com)

White Zinfandel

How can I swallow such a blatant lie? I’m not nearly drunk enough to think that the misnomer that is this silly pink wine is white.

Color blindness, however, is the least of its problems. White Zinfandel is wine with training wheels, a transitional beverage in the no-man’s land—seriously, no man would drink this—between a wine spritzer and a crappy bottle of wine with off-the-chart sugar levels.

The French manicure of wines, this varietal is sipped by real housewives who insist they are “classy” while tipping tables and pulling each others’ weaves. Tickled pink I am not.

(photo: inclinespirits.com)

Well drinks

I spent nigh on three decades wondering what all the fuss was about. I grew up with blue-collar alcoholics, I saw a buttload of drinking in college, and then I entered the working world, which meant a lot of ill-advised shoulder pads, crap happy hours, and drink specials.

Which meant a lot of cheap hooch and well drinks.

I didn't get it. Whiskey sours, sea breezes, white wine spritzers, Cape Cods, gin and tonics, highballs, vodka gimlets, screwdrivers, scotch and soda… I sampled the hell out of them all and found one common thread.

They all sucked gas-station attendant ass.

They tasted of medicine and jet fuel, laced with teeth-bruising sweetness. I didn't get it. I didn't cotton to beer and while I liked the pretentiousness of wine culture and barrel-aged reds, my migraines didn't.

So I stuck to Diet Coke.

Then something miraculous happened. I ordered a Tanqueray and tonic. My taste buds screamed their approval and I never looked back at the nameless bottles behind the bar. I traded up to the literal top-shelf liquors, trying Bombay, Tanqueray 10, Hendricks, Plymouth, Death's Door, and other kinds of fancy-pants gin. I asked a bartender to create a flight of martinis with different vodkas so my girlfriends and I could do a proper taste test. I no longer need to wish at the well because my dreams came true in a delicious green bottle.

 What's the worst drink you've ever knocked back?

(photo: mchenryconightout.com)

20-minute coffee prep

I don't know what's going on back there but this isn’t the Manhattan Project. It's a flippin' cup of coffee. While your coffee contraption looks like it was made by Skynet, I'm pretty sure it's not going to enable time travel. And it sure as hell isn't going to help me get back the 20 minutes I've been waiting patiently by the sugar station. What it—and you—are doing, however, is terminating my patience.

You don’t need to take the scenic route to get to my drink destination. Really. Just jump on the espressoway and knock that shit out. Don't wax rhapsodic about your special blend that was picked by monkeys on the north face of a mountain in Columbia. Don't spam me with your disdain for my decaf order. And while I appreciate your java jive, I don't need or want you to craft a flower or devil or my silhouette in my cappuccino's microfroth.

And when you take that long, you're setting up unreasonable expectations. If I don’t have an orgasm on my first foamy sip, your fine art of grinding, steaming, and frothing is lost on me. And that's truly a shame.

(photo: webdesignerdepot.com)

Baby New Year

Picking on Baby New Year is like shooting a guppy in a barrel. Three words have never been combined to such ridiculous effect (well, except maybe for Jar Jar Binks). A diapered baby with a pageant sash is the best we can come up for a spokesman at midnight on December 31? Baby should be snoozing in his crib, not hoovering Asti and twirling a noisemaker.

And don’t even get me started on Father Fucking Time. It’s past your bedtime, too, ding-dong. Drink some warm milk, wrap your beard around you like a wiry blanket, clap off the light, and call it a year.

(photo: handmadebymother.blogspot.com)

Irish pubs on St. Patrick’s Day

I love me some shepherd’s pie and a pint most days of the year. But when March 17 rolls around, I avoid green and McPubs like the plague. Arse clowns in the cups assume fake brogues and dance around like leprechauns who’ve finally found their pot o’ gold. And mo chuisle, it's "Erin Go Bragh," not Erin go braless.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’re not even Irish, for feck’s sake!

Take off the dumbass green bowler—it’s your unlucky charm today, Danny Boy—so I can beat you about the ears with a shillelagh. Better yet, here’s a pipin’ hot pot of colcannon. If you want to be Irish, you’ll need to suffer a little.

(photo: blogs.pitch.com/fatcity)

New Year’s Eve

My “top” New Year’s Eves:

• 1970-something: Mom and dad went to some party at the Holiday Inn—the motel where mom waited tables—and left me at home with my two older brothers. My Mrs. Beasley doll was decapitated that night, a harbinger of the tragic NYEs that were to come.
• 1987: Me, Lois, and Chris in Chris’s basement drinking Jager and playing euchre while wearing U-M boxer shorts. This would have been fine except for my inability to hold my hooch. I think I hurled around the time Weird Al was explaining his secret hangover recipe to Joe Piscopo on MTV. Poor timing, indeed.
• 1989: I was freshly heartbroken and covering the Rose Bowl for the yearbook, so I was in L.A. with the staff photographer. We wound up at a giant alumni party in the Valley on New Year's Eve, where I ran into my ex-boyfriend with his new girlfriend. I spent the night walking around the party with a 12-pack, dispensing beers to people who had a reason to live. I then sped back to the hotel on one of the freeways in a fugue state, stayed up all night, and then downed gallons of black coffee in the Rose Bowl press box…where I was seated next to my ex-boyfriend, a sports editor for the Michigan Daily. Oh, and Michigan lost that year.
  
• 1994: Me, my boyfriend, and a giant party at the Washington Hilton—the hotel where Reagan was plugged—with a few thousand of our closest strangers. We left in short order. The highlight of the night was getting a lift from one of the idling limos, which were acting as gypsy cabs while waiting for clients.
• 2004: Got stoned with my best friend while teaching her to knit and watching Gigli. This officially marked my march into spinsterdom.
• 2008: Me, a sorta boyfriend (who drank too much and eventually passed out), and two gay bears sat on the couch and watched Mythbusters. Holla. Oh yeah, he broke things off the next week via IM. This really set the tone for the massive suck that has been 2009.
• Tie for first/worst: 1990 & 2003: 1990 found me in Detroit, partying it up with my college friends at a party at the top of the RenCen. I wish I could say I was drunk, but I was just dumb-ass stupid. I went up a down elevator…or tried to. After a scary ambulance ride to Detroit Receiving with a driver who resembled Large Marge, I spent five hours getting my Frankenknee stitched up while hiking up my Ann Taylor skirt to avoid bloodshed and eyeballing the motley crew around me. One poor woman sat in a chair, holding her face because her boyfriend hit her with a bat. A dude in red briefs was shot in the thigh at a nightclub and bloody rags surrounded his gurney. And a guy was chained to his bed because he was caught stealing a Rolex; his head was swathed in bandages like he was a Dickens’ character with a really bad toothache. He didn’t have a toothache; the po po beat him. I couldn’t bend my knee for two weeks, which made driving a bit of a challenge. Fast forward a decade and change, and you’d find me at Bob & Barbara’s, a dope dive bar in Philly, watching my boyfriend kiss a guy in front of me. I walked out and left him behind. I wish I had the sense to ditch New Year’s Eve as well.

I've wised up and punched this holiday in its festive fucking façade. Should New Year’s Eve be forgot and never brought to mind? Hells, yeah. If I want to stay alive, I’m now finally ignoring this most ignoble of days.

What was your worst NYE experience?

(photo: cheapoairbuzz.wordpress.com)

Chai

Is it tea? Is it coffee? Is it just plain woo woo pretentious? What the fuck are you, chai?

If you’re not living in or touring India, chances are you are drinking a powdered version of this spiced milk tea, or even a bastardized chai/coffee hybrid. For instance, I just discovered that a dirty chai doesn’t involve extra olive juice, but a shot of espresso. Uh...

But it’s not just the chai itself. It’s the knobs who drink it. Somehow sipping on this strange brew, these exotic creatures feel enlightened and superior, much like I imagine Tom Cruise and his Scientology cronies feel after a good L. Ron Hubbard jamboree. Doctoring up their chai with a dollop of soy milk and a soupçon of cardamom, these wannabe Siddharthas eat, pray, and love throwing the stinkeye at my mocha choca latte and silently judging, all the while saying crap like “namaste, my friend” to my face while reaching for their heart center.

I want to punch these nirvana in a coffee cup-seeking sultans of swill in their third eye, until they're blind.

(I must admit that I do love this DIY chai recipe, if only for the illustration).

(photo: bodhileaftrading.com)

Starbucks drink orders

Cue the singsong voice: “So that’s a triple grande nonfat no-whip hazelnut latte? Is that right?”

Yeah, that’s what I said.

When I slink into a Starbucks and order up a large decaf single-shot Americano or a nonfat almond iced latte, do you really have to read it back to me in the correct, Starbucks-sanctioned order? Do I give a rat’s ass? Am I going to learn my mocha choka latte lesson next time?

Hells no.

It’s bad enough that I’m paying four bucks and downing a day’s worth of calories in my 20-ounce (i.e. venti) drink. Do you have to shame me as well? Isn’t slowly putting me in the red with your demon breakfast blend satisfying on its own? Why aren't you just content with making me tubby off of your blended fattuccino? Instead of writing N, D, or S/S on the side of the cup, try listing the minutes I need to work out at the gym to burn off my bevvie. That might be helpful.

If you keep correcting my Starbucksese, I’ll have no choice but to interpret them as fighting words and throw my double tall iced mocha in your face. Did I get that right?

(photo: flickr.com/photos/jychen/435108002/)

Coffee snobs

I’m a coffee pussy, I'm the first to admit. But when I’m forking over good coin for my grande decaf Americano (with room, if you please), I’d really like it if the barista didn’t coat me with disdain. I once ordered a nonfat decaf latte, and the baristickupherassta snidely informed me that this particular drink is called a “why bother.” As I added my three packets of raw sugar, I thought that maybe I should have bothered to jump behind the counter and whack her upside the head with my metal thermos.

It’s not just espresso-stand employees who give me guff. I also take shit from my more cultured friends who seek out beans picked by virgins in the most remote mountain regions of Central and South America and then home roast them, pulling them out at exactly the right moment after the second crack.

Dude, you have your form of crack and I have mine. You’re addicted to caffeinated coffee that costs $20 a pound. I’m addicted to MAC Viva Glam V Lipglass. Potayto, potahto.

If you insist on giving me the java jeer, I’ll have no choice but to give in and order up a cup of black coffee. After a horrifying sip, I decide you’ll enjoy this a whole lot more than me so I’m going to throw it in your jittery Starfucks face.

Just say espressno.

(photo: bloglines.com/blog/lizfender/2007_11)

The last swig of beer

An ice-cold beer is the perfect complement to so many things: fish and chips, polish sausage, my left hand. Couple my thirst for a cold one with slow service and my miserly nature, and you’ll find me drinking every last drop from the bottle.

This is a problem.

The last swig of beer is always, without fail, a disappointment, a letdown akin to Hayden Christensen skulking around as an emo Anakin Skywalker or Molly Ringwald showing up in a pink potato sack to prom at the end of Pretty in Pink. It’s warm—you could heat a room with it. It’s flat, like a soda that’s been sitting on the counter for three days. And it’s sour…like backwash. That last ill-advised sip leaves your mouth tasting faintly of hurl. In other words, it’s puke-flavored broth. I don’t know about you, but this isn’t the taste I want left in my mouth at the end of the night. Um, you know what I mean.

This afterwaste is going to get an afterlife. Being thrifty and shit, I’m pouring the dregs of every last bottle and can of PBR/MGD/IPA/BFD into a vat and repurposing this pukewarm swill to make bread or shampoo. Flat beer may bring me down, but damn if it doesn't fluff up my hair.

(photo: flickr.com/photos/miketoons/2579466215/)

Peach schnapps

Setting: Triangle Fraternity, somewhere in Michigan, sometime in the 80s…

Enter a brainy co-ed, wearing a peach-colored shirt from Contempo Casuals and that awesome pair of Guess jeans with the zippers at the ankles. You know what I’m talking about.

Well, the brainiac wasn’t so smart that particular night, as she was also packing a pint of peach schnapps. Even though the engineering fraternity usually had an open bar at its parties, it was sometimes inconvenient to interrupt a heated game of 8-ball or Twister to get a fresh fuzzy navel. So she brought her own, alternately taking swigs and reapplying her frosty Clinique lipstick, the one she got as a gift with purchase.

You know what happened next.

Wildly drunk, she had the walking spins, was flirting madly, bent down to pick up something and accidentally got kneed in the eye, yacked, and mercifully, finally passed out after Maria or someone got her back to South Quad.

The next day was not pretty, and not only because of her black eye.

To this day, the less-than-brainy graduate can suss out that treacly syrup in any punch (Jared’s new year’s concoction, to be precise) or cocktail. Just a soupçon of that peachish smell brings on da acid reflux, brings on da funk. During a brief stint at The Body Shop, she was immediately nauseated whenever someone dabbed the decay-scented oil on the wrist.

What's the deal with fruit-scented stuff that doesn’t actually smell or taste remotely like the real thing? Peach schnapps gives peach a bad rap. This will not do. It’s time to defend the honor of stone fruit everywhere and punch the evil that is peach schnapps in the schnoz. Better yet, I'm going to pour it into a vat near Fraternity Row, set it on fire, and let co-eds get that warm, fuzzy feeling without the threat of puking.

What booze has your body rejected?

(photo: andygreenwell.com/big%20pix-all/peach_schnapps.jpg)