It was 6:50, and I dashed out the door, and hurried the three blocks down the street to the corner brewpub.  “Happy hour is about to end,” I thought.  “If I can make it before 7, I can get a large beer for the price of a regular.”

At 6:54 I darted through the bar’s door, dashing by a couple of friends who wondered why I didn’t stop to say hello. Gotta get to the bar, gotta get to the bar.  6:55 - made it!  A bartender came over and I placed my order.

“Sorry, hon,” she told me.  “Happy hour ended three minutes ago.”

I looked at my watch.  WTF?  I pulled out my cell phone and looked at its clock.  It also said 6:55.  I protested.

“Our clocks run 8 minutes fast here,” the bartender explained, “so our happy hour ends at 6:52.  But look on the bright side.  You can come in here at 3:52 and get happy hour prices.”

“Yeah, but at 3:52 this place is a ghost town,” I replied, “because nearly everyone is still at work.”

I can’t see any legitimate reason why a bar would run its clocks 8 (or however many minutes) fast, other than to screw customers on pricing.  You can’t tell me that it’s that hard to reset a clock using standard bar-terminal software.  Seems like if my computer and my cell phone can connect to the government’s atomic clock to keep the official time, that bar computers ought to be able to do the same thing.

Just ranting a little… anyone else experienced this?  Any servers or bartenders out there who’ve been told to cut off happy hour early by management, or been told not to reset the clocks on their terminals?

Happy Easter!  A new church in Little Rock, Arkansas called “The River,” has decided to try something different to encourage people to come to Easter services:  They’re holding the services at a bar.  According to this MyEyewitnessNews article, this is an attempt to attract a new audience to its nondenominational Christian ministry.  Services will be held at the Rev Room, a bar/nightclub in Little Rock’s River Market district.  If it goes well they’ll have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day services there too.

Not a bad idea… for the past several years, my Easter basket has been a bucket full of ice and a bottle of champagne, sitting next to a carafe of orange juice to mix mimosas.  If you want to get drinkers to church, you’ve got to meet them halfway.

According to this Reuters article, Snow brand beer, brewed in China, has overtaken Bud Light for the title of the world’s best-selling beer.  Snow overtook Budweiser in 2007, and with a 19.1% increase in sales volume last year, it jumped ahead of Bud Light as well.  Brazilian beer Skol and Mexican beer Corona round out the top five.

China overtook the U.S. as the biggest beer-drinking market earlier this decade, and is now more than 50% larger.

Be sure to enjoy a best-selling beer in one of our best-selling beer glasses.  Well over a thousand to choose from.

Here in Downtown Memphis, home of the Mid-South Alcoholic Supply World HQ, we have a large number of homeless people who sleep on the streets and in parks.  We have several homeless shelters that would take them in, so why do they refuse these services?  Because most shelters prohibit the consumption of alcohol, and in many cases require guests to take part in treatment programs for alcoholism.  Many homeless are not ready to trade their addiction for a place to sleep.

A shelter in Seattle had a novel idea:  Why not let the homeless keep drinking?  So they opened a shelter that not only has no treatment program requirement for alcoholics, but actually allows drinking on the premises.  Needless to say, this has been somewhat controversial.  However, studies have indicated that daily alcohol consumption fell by 2 percent a month for those in the shelter.  “The longer the participants stay in the housing program, the less they drink,” said Mary Larimer, a psychology professor at the University of Washington who led the study.

There were benefits to the public as well.  The study indicated that the participants were less likely to end up in jails and emergency rooms at taxpayer expense.  Before the shelter opened, the 95 individuals who participated cost the public more than $4,000 a month each for their care and housing.  After 12 months, the taxpayers’ bill had been reduced to $958 per person on average.

Not a bad idea… offer help unconditionally, and let people come to the decision to conquer their demons when they’re ready.  Maybe more cities should take this approach.

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.

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.

When I was in fifth grade, one of our class projects was terrariums, little miniature ecosystems inside an enclosed space.  First we’d lay down a layer of dirt.  Then we’d plant grass seed.  Once the grass was growing, we’d add crickets.  Once the crickets had time to adjust to their new home, we’d add a frog.  Man those crickets stank.  At the end of the semester we turned the frog loose in the woods.

This Lifehacker article teaches you how to turn an empty wine bottle into a terrarium.  You aren’t going to be able to fit a frog in there, but with a little work you can get moss and similar plants growing.  Works best with clear or light-colored wine bottles, obviously.

Our bookstore can give you many more ideas on cool things to do with booze and booze products.

If you’re frying or grilling a steak, you can make it a healthier meal by first marinating it in booze.

So say the authors of this newsday.com article.  When you fry or grill a steak, you increase the amounts of cancer-causing compounds called heterocyclic amines (HAs).  Scientists at the University of Porto in Portugal studied the effects of marinating steak in either beer or red wine before frying.  They found that both beer and wine marinades were effective in reducing two types of HAs in fried steaks by 90%, and beer was more effective than wine for reducing a third type of HA.  Tasters thought the taste and smell of beer-marinated steak was superior as well.

Booze is good for you!  Scientists have said so.

Seattle Weekly has an “Ask the Bartender” column where an experienced bartender answers reader questions about drinking.  This week someone chimed in with an excellent question:  Should I ask for my drink shaken or stirred? Or does it matter?

You can read the full answer here.  To summarize:  For vodka it doesn’t make a difference, but for other liquors it can.  Shaking makes your drink colder, which can be a good thing.  However, your drink gets colder because more of the ice melts in the process, which dilutes your drink.  Shaking also aerates the liquor more, which some people claims “bruises” it.  Her final verdict:  Chill your liquor in advance.

My final advice:  Whether you shake or stir your cocktail, pour it into one of Mid-South Alcoholic Supply’s martini glasses and enjoy.