If you’re a fan of sake, the Japanese rice wine, check out this Baltimore Examiner article for lots of fun facts.  Here are a few things I learned:

- It’s considered improper to pour your own sake.  You are supposed to let your host or server do it for you.

- Sake is supposed to be served cold, which may come as a surprise because many Japanese restaurants and sushi bars in the U.S. serve it hot.  Sake served hot is often done to mask the taste of an inferior-quality sake, although in cold climates sake can be served hot to warm the drinker up.

- Sake is generally in the 14-19% alcohol range, slightly stronger than most traditional wines.

- There’s a “sparkling” version of sake, just as there is a sparkling version of wine.

Many more fun facts in the article.  Be sure to check out our sake store for books about sake and sake serving supplies.

I’ve run plenty of articles on this site before about wines to pair with beef, fish, pork, and even more exotic foods like hot wings and Mexican foods.  But what if you prefer to eat light?  If you plan on having a salad for dinner, what wine would complement it well?

This Madison, WI TV station has the answer. Not surprisingly, rich, bold wines can overwhelm a salad.  However, light, crisp, fresh whites work well with the greens.  Look for light wines under 12% alcohol.  “Crisp” is a wine-tasting term that describes a wine with high acidity.  Vinaigrette salad dressings are also high in acidity, so a crisp wine balances well.  A “fresh” wine lacks oak or buttery flavors that would overwhelm the salad.  Generally these are young wines.

Learn more about pairing wine with food in our bookstore.

WikiHow is a really useful site to find how-tos you never thought existed.  Last week they ran a how-to that will impress your friends at a bar:  How to Perform the Trapped Bill Trick.

The way it works is, you trap a dollar bill between two beer bottles:  One standing right side up on a table, bar or other level surface; then the dollar bill and the second bottle balanced on top of the first one.  You have to pull out the dollar bill while leaving the second bottle balanced on top of the first one.  It’s kind of like pulling the tablecloth off a table without disturbing the dishes, except for drunks.

Check out our bartender’s guides for many more bar tricks.

Perhaps you’ve seen both “whisky” and “whiskey” in liquor stores, and wondered if they were one and the same, or if they were different somehow.  Or perhaps you’ve wondered if all Bourbon is whiskey, or if all whiskey is Bourbon.  This Seattle Post-Intelligencer article can help.

To summarize:  Whisky and whiskey are the same thing.  Different dialects have led to different spellings of the word.  The Scotch never use the “e,” while the Irish always do.  Opinion on the “e” seems to vary in North America.

All Bourbon is indeed whiskey.  Bourbon is defined as a whiskey made in the United States, from pure ingredients including 51-79% corn, aged in a “charred new oak container.”  However, all whiskey is not Bourbon.  Scotch whisky is whiskey made in Scotland.  Irish whiskey and Canadian whiskey are other varieties.

Whatever your favorite whisky or whiskey, be sure to enjoy it in one of our fine highball glasses.

Spring is officially here, and it’s time for some warm-weather cocktails.  Here are a couple of recipes to get you started, both from SeattlePi.com:

• First of all, we have this recipe for lemongrass ginger vodka, made with Thai basil leaves, ginger, vodka, lemongrass, sugar, and water.
• Next up is a recipe for chile-infused vodka, which you then use in an ingredient in a key lime pear chile cocktail.

Find thousands of more cocktail recipes in our bartender guides.

Car companies are desperate to create vehicles that run on alternative fuels, and the Times of India reports that the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company is working on beer as a fuel.  Don’t worry, though; cars won’t be taking beer away from us.  Rather, Sierra Nevada is working with the E-Fuel company in Chico, California to convert unusable “bottom of the barrel” yeast into fuel.  This yeast contains 5 to 8 percent alcohol, and through processing can be increased to 15 percent.  One day this may lead to an environmentally friendly solution that will decrease our dependence on oil.

The more beer you drink, the more yeast will be available for processing.  So have a few pints in our beer glasses.

Here are some more booze-infused recipes I’ve found on the web in the past week.  Got a little somethin’ for everyone - beef, chicken, fish, and a side.

• Boston.com posted a recipe for Carbonnades a la Flamanade, or beef and onions braised in beer.  They recommend a dark Belgian-styled beer.
• Debbie Moose, author of Wings: 50 High-Flying Recipes for America’s Favorite Snack (available at a significant discount at Mid-South Alcoholic Supply), offers this recipe for roasted black pepper wings with maple bourbon glaze.
• If fish is your dish, the Indy Star offers this recipe for turbot with bananas, almonds, and rum.  It’s an adaptation of a dish found in The Black Dog Summer on the Vineyard Cookbook (available at a HUGE discount at Mid-South Alcoholic Supply).
• Of course, you’re going to need a side to go with your dinner.  Once again we go to the Indy Star, for sweet potato wedges with cranberry bourbon glaze.

Find more booze recipes in our bookstore.

On St. Patrick’s Day some of us were sitting around the bar drinking green beer and downing green Jello shots, and one of my drinking buddies grabbed a straw and started slurping his beer with it.  “You know, you get drunk faster if you drink beer with a straw,” he told me.  Of course, I’ve heard that ever since college.  Is it true?  I decided to do a little research.

The best answer I could find was on this forum, and according to the post’s author, yes, you do get drunk faster with a straw.  He gave two reasons:

• When you sip beer through a straw, it creates a vacuum that lowers the boiling point of alcohol below the normal 79 degrees C.  Therefore, more alcohol vapors get into the lungs, and these vapors get absorbed into the bloodstream much more quickly.
• Because the beer enters the mouth via a very narrow jet, it has more surface area.  Therefore, more alcohol can evaporate before the beer is swallowed.  The palate, rich in blood vessels, absorbs these vapors, again getting more alcohol into the bloodstream more quickly.

So you do get drunk faster, although the overall amount of alcohol consumed is the same.

Whether you use a straw or not, be sure to sip your beer from some of our fine beer mugs.

Yesterday I posted about a bartender who showed me a mind-reading trick.  I hid a penny under one of 9 cups, in 3 rows of 3, while she had her back turned.  When she turned around, she was able to consistently guess which cup contained the penny, as my drinking buddy on the stool next to me and I gazed in astonishment.  What was her secret?

Well, I gave you a hint at the end of yesterday’s post, when I told you to check out our supply of cocktail napkins.  Does that help, now that you realize it’s a hint?

This was her secret:  My drinking buddy on the stool next to me was in her confederate in the game.  He’d take a sip of beer as I hid the penny, then place the beer on his cocktail napkin in such a way to indicate where the penny was.  If I placed it in the upper middle cup, he’d put his beer on the upper middle of the napkin.  If I placed it in the lower right cup, the beer would go on the napkin’s lower right.

“What if I tried to trick her, and not place the penny at all?” I asked him.

“Then I’d place the beer completely off the napkin, and she’d still know,” he told me.  There was no way I was going to win the game with him sitting there.  Good thing I didn’t place a money bet on the hide-the-penny game.

Check out The Professional Bartender’s Handbook for more tricks and games.

A few years ago, I was a regular at Sunday brunch at a bar called The Blue Monkey about a mile from the Mid-South Alcoholic Supply World HQ.  I liked their $12 bottles of champagne, with orange juice set-ups for make-your-own mimosas.  One day I was sitting up there, drinking mimosas and watching whatever football game was on at the time.  It was a slow day and the bartender came over, and laid 9 cups in front of me, in 3 rows of 3.

“Do you have a penny?” she asked.  I did.

“I bet I can read your mind,” she told me.  “I’m going to turn my back, and I want you to hide the penny under one of the cups.  Tell me when I can turn around, and I bet I can guess which cup has the penny.”  So she turned her back and I hid the penny.  She turned around, thought for a second, and guessed the correct cup.

“Okay, she got lucky,” I commented to the guy sitting next to me drinking a beer.  “Let’s do it again.”  She turned her back a second time, and I hid the penny.  “No way she’ll get it twice in a row,” I told the guy on the next bar stool as he took a sip and set his glass down.  “The chances of that are 1 in 81.”  But she got it again.

I looked at the bar behind her.  She wasn’t in front of the mirror, so she couldn’t see what I was doing.  I made her move a couple of liquor bottles that I thought were casting a reflection.  But she got it again.  And again.  She even put on a blindfold and got it yet again.

How did she keep guessing where the penny was?  Answer tomorrow.  In the meantime, why not browse our collection of cocktail napkins?