If you own an iPhone, check out this article listing 18 of the top drinking applications that can be installed on the phone.  You’ll find everything from beer counters to tip calculators to notepad applications that let you take notes on the beers and wines you taste.  There’s also an application called PigUpLines that will help you come up with “the right words for that special girl in the tube top standing by the bar.”  Being a tube top fan myself, that app alone is almost enough to make me go out and buy an iPhone.

Check out the article if you own an iPhone… it’s always nice to have software to enable your drinking problem.

This article from the Malaysia Star offers some great advice about choosing a wine refrigerator.  Domestic fridges, it notes, can be used as a stopgap, but they are not the ideal way to store wine:  The temperature changes due to frequent opening and closing of the door, the vibration of the compressor affects the wine, and there is dehydration due to the fact that refrigerators were designed to store food.

Ideally, it says, you want a temperature between 10-15 degrees Celsius (50-59 F) and a humidity level of about 70%.  It recommends 12C (54F) as the ideal temperature if you are storing reds and whites together.  A bar down the street from the Mid-South Alcoholic Supply World Headquarters has separate fridges for red and white, and keeps the whites at 49-50F and the reds at 59-66F.

We have a large supply of wine refrigerators in our wine refrigerator store, so check them out if you’re seriously interested in storing your wine properly.

A “debate” recently took place at the Tampa Bay Improv theater.  The contestants:  Bourbon whiskey vs. Scotch whiskey.  A Scotsman who can trace his roots back to the 13th century debated a good ol’ boy in blue jeans from Kentucky.  They debated issues like environmental consciousness, health care platform, and economic stimuli.

In the end, bourbon was declared the winner.

Mid-South Alcoholic Supply has added two new drinking-related search engines.  As loyal Dr. Booze readers, you get to try them out a day before everyone else.

Cheap Beer Search Engine - This is the place to search for bars that sell one or more beers for $2 all day, every day.  For example, Calhoun’s in Memphis, TN’s South Main district always has PBR for $1.50.

If you know of a place that has $2 or cheaper beer all day, every day that’s not listed, there’s a link where you can add it.  Please only list bars that sell at least a 12 oz. serving of beer or beers for $2 or less all the time (not happy hours), to all customers (not a ladies’ night), without additional purchase.  You’ll be able to list happy hours and ladies’ nights and other drink specials on the other search engine.

Now, as I was programming the cheap beer search engine, I realized the $2 cutoff was a disservice to some bars that sell much larger beers for cheap prices (but not $2).  For example, down the street from the Mid-South Alcoholic Supply World HQ there’s a bar called Big Foot Lodge that sells $3.99 34 oz. Coors Light drafts.  That’s certainly a bargain, but it wouldn’t qualify to be listed on the cheap beer search engine (actually, I remembered they have a smaller 12 oz. Coors Light for 2 bucks, so they did make it).  So I created a second search engine…

Happy Hour and Drink Special Search Engine - This is a place where you can search for happy hours, daily drink specials, ladies’ nights, and other drinking bargains.  You can search by city/state or zip code and by day(s) of the week.

Once again, if your favorite bar has specials and you don’t see them listed, you have the ability to add them.  Since the listings are more complex, I also provided “edit listing” links for each bar - that way, if you see that your bar’s info is incorrect, you can fix it without having to get me involved.  (For security reasons I didn’t supply “delete” links - you do have to contact me for that.)

Give ‘em a try, do some searches, add some listings.  Right now most of the listings are for the Mid-South Alcoholic Supply World HQ’s hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, so if you’re from somewhere else, your searches may come back empty.  No problem, that means there’s plenty of opportunity to be the first one to add bar listings for your area!

Let me know if you encounter any bugs or problems - you can e-mail me at info@midsouthalcoholicsupply.com.  They’re brand new, so you’re sort of my beta testers for the first couple of weeks.  I hope you find the new search engines useful - my goal is to have listings nationwide in both by Spring 2009.

White zinfandel, a wine from the pink “rose” or “blush” family, is a wine that wine snobs have looked down their nose upon for quite some time.  I used to get a kick out of ordering white zinfandel on purpose when hanging out with these types of snobs, just so they’d have to be seen with someone drinking the out-of-vogue drink.

Not all roses are white zins, though.  This article introduces you to some other pink or rose wines that are great for serving in the summer.

Be sure to enjoy your favorite rose (or white or red) in one of our many fine wine glasses.

This Baltimore Nightlife Examiner article has plenty of information about “bomb” shots, the most famous of which are the Jager Bomb (a shot of Jagermeister dropped in a glass of Red Bull) and the Irish Car Bomb (a shot of Irish cream and Irish whiskey dropped in a glass of Guinness).  The article goes on to talk about advanced shots, including Bear Fights, the Texas Two Step, and in honor of the Democratic convention this week, Obombs for Obama.

Don’t forget that we have power bomb cups that allow you to mix “bomb” shots right there in the glass (you don’t have to worry about shattering a glass or your teeth as you down it).  We also have a full selection of regular shot glasses.

The Democratic National Convention starts this week; the Republican one follows soon afterward.  As we enter the home stretch for the 2008 election, D.C. bartenders were surveyed about Republican and Democrat drinking habits.

The survey found that Democrats were better tippers - not surprising, they’re known to share the wealth more than Republicans.  Democrats also have better pick-up lines - again not surprising, given that Bill Clinton is a Democrat.

Republicans are more likely to order a drink straight-up, while Democrats are more likely to order a pink fruity drink.  Perhaps that’s because guys who identify themselves as manly men are more likely to be Republicans, while the Democratic party has a history of being more friendly to women and gays.

Click the link above to check out the entire survey.

A group of 100 college presidents, including the president of Dr. Booze’s alma mater Rhodes College, are lobbying Congress to lower the national drinking age to 18. They believe it will decrease the effects of binge drinking among 18-to-20-year-olds.  I’m 100% in support of this idea, and not just because I think people should drink more and buy lots of drinking supplies at Mid-South Alcoholic Supply.  These are the reasons I support the age change:

- If kids under 21 want to drink, they’re going to find a way to do it.  This could involve getting a fake ID, or it could involve sending older college students to the store for them.  I used to teach college students and I used to be one myself, and I speak with experience when I say that very few 18-20 year olds will let a little thing like a law stop them.

- Oftentimes, they’ll accomplish this by drinking a lot before going out and hitting bars that let 18-20 year olds in but don’t let them drink.  Meaning, they’ll drink a lot and DRIVE to the bars.  Then they’ll probably sneak drinks from older friends once there, and drive home drunk too.  MADD claims that lowering the legal limit will increase drunk driving; I’m not at all sure that’s true.

- If college students can drink at 18, they’ll be more likely to drink on campus, and not drive at all.

- As the college presidents point out, you can sign up for the military, get shipped to Iraq and get shot to death at 18.  You can buy cancer-causing cigarettes at 18.  You can vote to elect a president at 18.  But you can’t buy a damn beer.  It’s really pretty ridiculous.

- People want what they are told they can’t have.  Kids 18-20 want to drink so badly because they’re told they’re not supposed to.  I say, give ‘em a bottle of cheap Evan Williams or a can of Natty Light at 18, let them see how awful the stuff tastes, and I bet many of them will elect not to do it again.

I think the college presidents are on the right track.  It’s time to lift the taboo on drinking for Americans 18-20.  It doesn’t stop them anyway, and it will remove the stress of having to hide it that often leads to bad decision-making.

One country you don’t hear about every day, which has been doing rather well in the Summer Olympics, is the Eastern European country of Romania.  I discovered what a wonderful place Romania is a few years ago, when two Romanian college girls came to town for their summer break and got jobs in the bar down the street from the Mid-South Alcoholic Supply World Headquarters.  I enjoyed hearing all about their country… and watching them walk around in the miniskirts that were the bar’s uniform.

Here’s an article about the struggle to reinvent the wine industry in Romania. Romania has undergone a lot of change lately - it’s been a capitalist country for a little less than 20 years - and therefore the wine industry has too.

Our wine racks are a great place to store your Romanian wine, and wine from other countries as well.

A new, two-day, coach-driven tour through the Kentucky hills offers tours and tastings at seven bourbon distilleries.  If you love bourbon, want to taste different brands, and learn more about how it’s made, this may be the vacation you’ve been waiting for.  According to this travel article, the bourbon trail tour makes stops at

• The Wild Turkey distillery
• The Buffalo Trace dilstillery
• The Four Roses distillery
• Heaven Hill Distilleries
• Jim Beam American Outpost
• The Maker’s Mark distillery
• The Woodford Reserve distillery

Six of the seven offer tours for free; the Woodford Reserve tour is $5.  The article also notes that the annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival happens next month, September 16 to 21.

Be sure to enjoy your favorite bourbon in our fine highball glasses, shot glasses, and old-fashioned glasses.