It's time for another round of "name your favorite mixed drink, and how to make it". Or describe an outlandish, ill-considered, or random mixture and how it turned out.

Right now, I'm drinking an unnatural experiment made with odd drams to get rid of a couple of near-empties prior to moving.

2 oz. jack pine gin (freezer cold, local product, could use any botanical gin)
1 oz. peony baijiu (gift from a friend's visit to China)

Shake with ice, serve in a coupe glass with a very small amount of ice. It's good enough that I'll try making peony-infused vodka next spring.

[I don't usually enjoy mixed drinks because so many are too sweet - that's the spouse's domain. But some combinations of herbal, floral, spicy, bitter, or sour flavors work for my taste.]

Feel free to share what's working for you.

A drink coaster goes under a glass or cup, and is intended to catch any condensation or spillage from the glass, to protect the tabletop underneath.

But most coasters are flat.* Any liquid that gathers on them can roll off the edges onto the table. Some coasters are made of a water-absorbing material, like cardboard or cork, but some are made of materials that repel water, like metal or ceramic or plastic.

I ask this because I recently discovered a small coaster-like tray with an upraised lip around the edge. Strictly speaking, it's not a coaster, but it's exactly the right size to be used as a coaster - and, with the upraised lip around the edge, it actually prevents liquid from escaping onto the table.

So why are coasters flat?

(I bought some of the lipped not-coasters to use as coasters. This design makes sense to me. And they happen to look nice as well.)

* It was only while researching coasters online prior to making this post that I discovered that some coasters have lips. Every coaster I've seen in real life is flat.

So, I'm currently working up 2 1 gallon apfelweing batches. For a while I was doing many 6 gallon batches, but took a break for a while, and getting back into it.

Any other homebrewers out there? Anything fermented, even kombucha :)

@cadadr's Turkey AMA coffee commentary got me curious about what coffee consumption and cultures look like among Tilders.

If your principal national beverage is tea instead of coffee, feel free to comment on why you think that might have arisen.

I spent a bit of time chasing one of @cadadr's mentions about tasseomancy, and it's fascinating, so please describe if your coffee culture has any comparable rituals.

I grew up with my mother's Montreal Canadian coffee-drinking standards: starting around age 8 or so, a half-cup of stovetop percolated coffee with a half-cup of milk added, eventually graduating to full cups of strong black coffee by my teenage years. For most of my life, the commonest means of consuming coffee was via the Bunn restaurant coffee maker - a drip coffee maker with an electric burner that held the brew scalding hot, near-burnt.

The commonest U.S. home coffee preparation still uses a drip coffee maker. "Pod" coffee makers that use prefilled cartridges and a pressure boiler (lower pressure than espresso, but similar) are increasingly popular.

Practically all coffee in the U.S. is made from imported beans, with robust global supply chains. There's minimal boutique coffee production in the states of Hawaii and California, but the territory of Puerto Rico grows coffee for local use and premium export. Coffee is taxed at the same rates as other food products, and no import duties are levied, so it's incredibly cheap - usually $5 - 10 per 450g.

In the U.S., at least, there are now widespread corporate coffee shop chains - Starbucks, Peet's, Caribou, and others, which produce very standardized, uniform coffee, in pressure-expressed, brewed, and cold-process variations. They're often prepared with flavored syrups, and typically have dairy added, either as plain or steam-heated and frothed milk. Average cost for the fancier variations is around 5 USD, though a cup of plain brewed coffee is usually $1.50 - $2.00.

Even tiny villages have neighborhood coffee shops that serve plain brewed coffee and espresso drinks, teas, baked goods, and simple sandwiches. Local coffee roasters are relatively common, too. The coffee shops may feature their products, or the roaster may have its own cafe'. Most of the larger bookstores also serve coffee, teas, and espresso drinks in their own cafe's.

We usually drink our coffee relatively strong, around 10 - 15g of ground coffee per 200 ml of water for brewing, and dark roasts are preferred over mild ones.

Most U.S. cities support thriving international food and beverage cultures, so we get to try coffee variations from around the world. My personal favorites (aside from the obvious Italian espresso culture) are Turkish-style with cardamom, Ethiopian, and Cuban colada.

There isn't much of a national tea tradition here, though there's a common practice of herbal tisane use for health purposes.

I've visited around 43 of the 50 U.S. states and haven't noticed really distinctive regional variations, except for New Orleans chicory-flavored and New Mexico piñon-flavored coffee. My spouse adds chicory to coffee at home, and piñon coffee is delicious. We'll treat ourselves to shipments a couple of times a year. Hawaiian Kona variety beans are boutique-premium and there's some fakes, so we don't go out of our way to get it when fair-trade Ethiopian or Guatemalan varieties are better and cheaper. I try very hard not to think of the carbon footprint of any of this...