This just in from Beer Mutineer JJ Bagley at the Great American Beer Festival in Colorado: They’ve taken Capri Sun juice box packaging and applied it to alcohol. I guess the old standard “mini-bottle” commonly found in airplanes and hotel rooms doesn’t provide the stealth-ness or usability for “consumers with an active lifestyle”. Continue Reading »

The economic crisis has been dominating the news as well as the attention of politicians; however, this last Tuesday night a bill was passed in the Senate relating to rum taxes and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The bill says that the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico will receive $13.25 for each proof (a liquid gallon consisting of 50% alcohol) gallon of rum produced in the U.S. Virgin Islands and sold in the United States. The bill, S. 2886, extends a previous tax arrangement that lasted from July 1, 1999 to December 31, 2007. The bill is retroactive to January 1, 2008, and extends the 1999 arrangement to December 31, 2009. Continue Reading »

What is it?

Ginger beer is one of the best kept non-alcoholic secrets in beverage. You are probably familiar with ginger ale (an airline favorite), but ginger beer is a very different beast. Ginger beer is typically made using natural ingredients in an artesian way, whereas ginger ale is produced using industrial processes. Ginger ale ends up tasting like Sprite with ginger syrup added, whereas ginger beer can be very complex, bursting with ginger flavor, and often with small pieces of ginger floating in the liquid visible to the human eye. Continue Reading »

I drink a lot of vodka, so don’t get me wrong.   It has its place.   Lately though, I’ve been exploring cocktails that don’t use vodka.  My  thought behind this is that vodka is really good at one thing: getting  people very drunk, very quickly.  Vodka is defined as a tasteless,  odorless spirit.  So, with exception to the alcohol, it really isn’t adding much to your cocktail.  It’s like alcoholic water, which again,  has its place.  Why not use a spirit that will add complexity and  flavors to your cocktail?  Continue Reading »

By tomorrow we should all be celebrating the success of NASA’s Phoenix Lander, due to set down near Mars’ North Pole in the late afternoon.  Ramp up is set for 4:30pm and the automated landing process is expected to last about an hour.  This marks one more hurdle leaped by NASA, but more importantly lines us up: right on time to discover faster than light travel later this century.  Continue Reading »