A little background:
I’m an Irish man who lived in Scotland for a long time and developed a penchant for good Scottish whisky.

I’ve since moved back to Ireland and am on a quest to find good Irish whiskey.

I’ve been looking for double distilled, single pot (or single malt) and have found a couple of nice ones, though this is somewhat counter to the Irish market which favours triple distilled and has (imo) a narrower taste profile, especially when compared to scotch.

Currently drinking: Shortcross rye and barley

Its really pleasant and quite different to the traditional Jameson/bush. There’s a bit of depth to it, some spice from the rye and a lovely classic malty finish.

Any other whisky enjoyers out there ?

My partner and I like to have a drink while we cook/ after work, and we've usually switch between some wine or more recently nice cocktails. I'd like to up my cocktail game when I'm hosting though.

What simple cocktails would you guys suggest?

So far my favourite cocktails are Negroni, White Russian, Old fashioned, and for after dinner a friend of mine made that Im not too sure about that's a 50 50 mix of whisky and amaretto with a cherry that's surprisingly good.

A few questions for those who have tried homebrewing (and general thread on homebrewing in general)

• Have you ever tried homebrewing?
• What were lessons learned?
• Did you regret the up-front investment?
• Do you bottle or keg?
• What are your favorite recipes?
• What is your setup like?

Feel free to answer only one question, all of them, or none of them and share an anecdote!

TL;DR - I'm trying to find a way to purchase Chilean Cerveza Cristal in the US for a joke that is very important to a friend of mine.

So, some of you may be aware of the current memes surrounding a series of advertisements from a Chilean beer company that interrupted airings of the Star Wars films in an... unconventional way.

Well, my friend is both a huge beer aficionado and a huge Star Wars fan, and he occasionally works with the Star Wars folks at conventions. He's planning some interesting stuff for an upcoming event but can't for the life of him find the stuff here in the US. I haven't been able to turn up a retailer for it either. Does anybody know of a good way to get foreign beer into the US?

It's summer, and it's time to relax. What is everyone drinking tonight?

I'll start:

I got sick and tired of drinking margaritas so I made a Paloma with the tequila I had around

2 oz of Tequila (blanco preferred)
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Grapefruit Juice
1/2 oz Simple Syrup

After mixing add all the ingredients into 1/2 a grapefruit soda.

I mixed the ingredients sans a soda and strained it into a highball glass then added the soda. Normally, I'd juice the lime myself, and garnish, but I'm lazy and my wife wanted a margarita instead. It's incredibly refreshing and citrus-y, but it is incredibly refreshing especially on a hot day.

What's everyone else drinking?

Lately I've been into La Fin du Monde, which is a Triple Blond from Canada. When I took the first sip it put a smile on my face. Very complex flavors. It has that Trippel flavor but I detect some of what I'd call 'berry and spice'. I'm not some beer expert, nor do I have the vocabulary to accurate explain the profile. All I can say is it's worth a shot!

Other than that Sam Adams Summer has been great for the hot days.

An offshoot of /r/cocktails recently had a weekly challenge of making cocktails with specified ingredients. In lieu of that, I thought it might be neat if you had an ingredient (spirit, liqueur, fruit, etc.) that you've wanted to use in a cocktail, we could workshop potential uses. Alternatively, if you've found something that works (maybe unexpectedly), you can share it here.

Years ago, circa 2017, I spent a few weeks in Portland, OR for work. Naturally, I ended up at Jeffrey Morgenthaler's Clyde Common regularly. On one of the weekends, I went to Common for brunch and they served a "breakfast" cocktail in glass coke bottles. From memory it was sweet, earthy, rich with slight chocolate hints, mildly carbonated, and strong. It was totally different from most breakfast cocktails that opt for bright and citrus flavors (i.e. mimosas, bloody Marys) and I think the carbonation definitely helped soften the otherwise heavy design of this drink.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight to ask about the cocktail's construction and Common closed shortly after. Recently, I've been trying to recreate it from memory, or more generously, recreate the idea of it (short of Morgenthaler himself identifying the cocktail, there's no way I'll be able to reproduce it). My best guess is that he made something close to a black Russian and ran it through a carbonator.

Here are my thoughts to riff off of that type of drink for a strong breakfast cocktail:
2 oz Bourbon, 1 oz Mr. Black, .5 oz Amaretto, .5 oz Maple Syrup, topped with carbonated water, built neat in a highball glass. I'm still tweaking the proportions, but given that Mr. Black is less sweet than other coffee liqueurs, and considering the dilution from carbonated water, I think a half/half mix of Amaretto and Maple Syrup is sweet without being cloying. I also went with Amaretto instead of another syrup like orgeat to keep the alcohol content higher.

Any thoughts? Other ideas in a similar vein?

Was a fun little project. I worked on the drinks myself first, then gave them to my roommate for a blind taste test, and asked her to describe the kind of character she thought the drink was about. If she wasn't at least mostly right, then I'd have to try again - but they somehow ended up a lot more accurate than I expected to be, despite the fact that she knows nothing about this D&D game, haha. I guess we're just really on the same wavelength?

Anyway, without further ado, here are the recipes! If there are any other mixologists on here, I'd love to hear what you think - and you want to try (something like) any of these drinks but are missing an ingredient or two, let me know and I'm happy to try to suggest a few possible substitutions.

Avery

• 0.75 oz chartreuse
• 0.5 oz montenegro
• 0.5 oz black walnut liqueur
• 0.5 oz distilled water

Liz

• 0.75 oz peated gin
• 0.75 oz crème de violette
• 10 drops lemon juice
• yuzu bitters

Matoya

• 1 oz mezcal
• 1.5 oz lemon tonic
• cardamom bitters

Morgana

• 1 oz plum gin
• 1 oz white rye
• 1 oz distilled water
• lavender lemon bitters

Sylvaire

• 0.75 oz cognac
• 0.25 oz pomegranate liqueur
• 0.25 oz grand marnier
• 0.75 oz peach juice
• peychaud’s bitters

V

• 0.75 oz peated gin
• 0.25 oz galliano vanilla
• 0.25 oz absinthe
• 1 oz peach juice
• hibiscus rosehip bitters
• cucumber twist (i.e. take a thin lengthwise slice of a baby cucumber and curl around the inside of the glass)

In the spirit of the whiskey thread I wanted to do the same for beer. What’s the style of the evening or week?
I just returned from Indianapolis and IPAs definitely dominate the taps. I’ll drink most anything but I’m much more of a wheat guy, myself. Hoegaarden and Weihenstephaner are my go-to’s!

After seeing the recent espresso post, I figured I'd start a thread for cocktails. I've been recently getting into decent rums (Smith & Cross is a favorite) and have been playing around with different recipes and uses.

So far, I've found a good spring/summer spritzer of cachaça (raw sugarcane distillate from Brazil, with a grassy, vegetal flavor), elderflower liqueur, and tonic water. I need to refine it, but I think I'm at a 2/0.5/4 ratio of spirit/liqueur/tonic. I love the way the herbal-sweet elderflower mixes with the cachaça, balanced by the bitterness of the tonic.