Bartender?

[Gabbin]

Ya ever had this conversation with a pal about what this or that liquor was made from? Tell me what ya know.

[Gabbin]

Oh, I will start off with whiskey.

Whiskey. Hmm. Well, this one is not too particular. Distilled liquor made from Barley, rye corn etc.....what the heck? etc?

Ewe...whiskey sour: whiskey, lemon juice and sugar.

Oh, and to make sure this all has some appearance of propriety..
Whiskey's word comes from whiskybae, gaelic (hmm, shall I joke on that? Need I?) uisgebeatha usquebaugh. What? That doesn't tell me a thing other than that it is from Gaels of laughter. Perhaps whiskybae originated from whiskybabe.

whisky-Canadian or Scotch whiskey.

[Siren]

You know, it's threads like this that made me say...

"And that Woolfs/Woolves thing sounds like something Gaggie would come up with. You should be frightened. Very frightened."

There's only one you, Gaggie!! *mwah!*

[Gabbin]

Mwah right back at ya, Siren. You sweetie.

Have a Virgin Bloody Mary on me.

[lolapunk]

Gabs! Long time, happy to see you back.

I know very little about that which I drink. Gin is from juniper berries, Chambord is from royal french berries, single malt scotch is either made from kerosene or heaven and ales are from a higher heaven. Oatmeal stout (not trout, Sister, sorry) sit on that holy throne and are known to mankind as Samuel Smith.

There, glad I could help you out.

[Phalon]

Whiskey. Hmm. Well, this one is not too particular.

No?

Whiskey confuses me. And not just when I've had too much, try to open the front door, and wonder whis-key unlocks the damn thing.

What's the difference? Bourbon, sour mash (a hint of smooshed lemons?), scotch whiskey. Is scotch whiskey? Jack Daniels is bourbon; Jim Beam is sour mash as is Wild Turkey, which is quite gamey, but goes well with cranberries.

Songs of whiskey; there are many. Whiskey Man - pick one, and help me get in the door. One bourban, one scotch, and one beer - one of these things does not belong with the others, and Metallica's "Whiskey In a Jar".

That's gotta be moonshine.

[Gabbin]

*hic* slow down there girls. One liquor at a time. Gawd! We obviously have some pent up drink query needs to attend here.

Gams, you were not paying attention to the sublties of whisky vs whiskey; go back and read that again.

And BOLL at your bourban singing. Is that the Tammy Wynot version? One bourban, one scatch one beear.

Okay, Scotch Whisky (drop the e) is distilled in Scotland-I know, shocking isn't it? I was thinking Checloslavakia (how the hell do ya spell that pupper?) is primarily made of malted barley in a patent still.

Bourbon is whiskey, too. It is primarily a primate and is made of straight whiskey from a mash having 51% or more corn. It originated in Bourbon County, Kentucky.

Sour mash is a whiskey, also. Isn't everything? A blended grain mash. This is a gross one; a junk mash made from a blend of new mash and mash from the previous run and mash regurgetated from a cow, yielding a high rate of lactic acid. Yick.

That is about all I can take of that.

Lola-I need more specifics on your stuff. The origins and place and stuff. Work, honey, work. You too, Gams. Sheesh. I thought I was just gonna sit back and drink and read.

Now I can drink.

This is interesting stuff and I will get it all mashed up when I get drunk at the bar.

[Gabbin]

By the way, y'all, I will be at the bar practicing my new found knowledge tommorrow night and, I will NOT be drinking any mash.

Care to join me? We shall be oh so popular spewing out drink info.

[Phalon]

We shall be oh so popular spewing out drink...

Ick. Not a way to gain popularity, I'd think.

So you like my Bourbon singing; whiskey shall I sing it in? Maybe I'll try it sometime when I've actually been drinking. That'd be fun, I think, Gabbin....you and I walking zig-zaggedly down the street, whiskey bottle carefully concealed in paper-bag, singing songs of...what? We'd have to find a song we both know; is that possible?

In your whiskey run, you forgot to mention Moonshine. It is a whiskey. It's made from corn anyway, but then again so's succotash - so what's that prove. Lima Peru-se my way through a two minute drill and find out. (Do lima beans come from Peru? And who would eat them? Ick.)

Moonshine: Illegally distilled whiskey. Also called white lightning.

I discovered during The Moonshine Two-Second drill - going for speed on this one - that cars were modified to drive at high speeds during moonshine whiskey runs to avoid federal agents, the bootleggers racing to make their deliveries. This evolved into what is known as NASCAR, (seriously, I'm not making this up, and I wonder which distilleries had their sponsorship plastered on these moonshine cars, and did the cars themselves run on moonshine? I've heard ethanol was used to distill.).

Is your driving that fast, Gabbin. We might have to out-run them, yanno, to avoid arrest for noise pollution after numerous complaints about our drunken singing.

[Gabbin]

Play it, Sam..

We will always have one bourban one scatch one beear, Gams. I am actually going to have to change that to Cindi Lauper singing that, not T. Winer-ette.

Aha! That is the problem, I bet, that is why I drive so slow old ladies flip me the bird, I am using unfermented grapes. It just doesn't have that highly explosive factore. Well, have you ever seen a do not smoke sign near a grape tank?

I shall switch to a nice zinfandel and see what happens.

[Phalon]

I understand your reisling, Merlot Andretti - I see the way your mind works.

[Gabbin]

Does that scare you? That you see how my mind works?

I watched several people zinfandel on the ice today. One shouldn't mix wine with ice. Only scotch and ice.

I was at the pub today and learned a bit about the beer brewing process and such. I shall have to share my new-found wisdom on that.

I have no idea it that should or shouldn't be hyphenated but, that is the nice thing about hyphens and dashes and such, all preference.

[Gabbin]

Sold! Bebe, sold!

I am booking my flight.

I think we need to talk malts here, single and multiple or whatever. Has anyone had a multiple malt? Is this sounding too personal? I feel like it is?

Are you a single, double M or multiple type? Ha ha ha.

It is way too late for me to be up, goodnight G.

[katina2nd]

Enjoy a nip of "Baileys Irish Cream" occasionaly, think it's made from ................ errr, Irish Cream?
Afraid that's about all I can contribute to this discussion, so I'll just take my cup of Earl Grey and slink quietly away.

[Gabbin]

Cool. But I can't go to Ulster.

I hope I quoted this right, Maeve.

So, what is up with Ulster? Does it give you and ulcer?

I like Bailey's too, Kat. Yum. I like Grand Marnier and Kahlua, too-a.

[lolapunk]

That makes a black and tan lose some of it's appeal, eh? I think I will remember that little bit when I order one in the future.

I know so little about the ancestory of beverages; might I add to this what I do know? Drinks, of course, the mixing of. For ex: a Wisconsin Lunchbox. Personal favorite (you'll find I have many personal favorites), it's half yellow domestic beer, half orange juice and a drop shot of amaretto.

The bartender where I work Monday nights is from Wisconsin, don'tcha know, and when I belly up and say, "A Wisconsin lunchbox, eh" her eyes get big. I don't think I've actually paid for one yet. Those folks from up north dere are so nice. Oh yah they are.

[Phalon]

Enjoy a nip of "Baileys Irish Cream" occasionaly, think it's made from ................ errr, Irish Cream?

Mmmm, Katina. Not much of a drinker either, but I do love Baileys in my coffee. My latest coffee additive is Baileys Mint Chocolate Chip....coffee, Baileys, and hot-chocolate taste all rolled in together - what could be a more fitting winter morning wake-me-up?

A "drop-shot", Lola. Is that when the whole shot glass full of, in this case amaretto, is sunk into the bigger glass - shot glass and all?

[lolapunk]

Exactly, Phalon, shot glass and all. Makes for a bit of a splash if you're not practiced at the art. No worries about a shot glass hurtling towards those pearly whites, though... at least I've never heard of any injuries. Oddly enough, it's a very different taste compared to simply adding a shot of whatever; I'm sure there's a science to it but science is the last thing I'm thinking about when I drink. ...and yes, one can surmise I don't think much about science.

[Gabbin]

I thought the B & T's were disbanded. Hmm. Well, my pal likes Black and tan...or Bock and tan. She herself has a back tan but I think that is ancestry and not drink related.

Baileys Mint Chocolate Chip

GADS!

Okay, I need to do some research and catch up (I seem to always be doing that, don't I?). Now that my guests are all gone and I am alone lonely loner, I shall do just that.

Cheers!

[Phalon]

Hiya Gabbin. Anything aleing you tonight? If so, I know it's not your malt - it's everyone else to blame. Pull up a stool - or as Lola says, 'belly up to the bar'. I'm buying.

[Phalon]

I believe I'm being ignored....so I shall sing to pass the time.

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,
ninety-nine bottles of bee--er.
Take one down, pass it around...

I wonder where that song originated; this is the place to ask that, no?

[Gabbin]

George Thourogood. How do you spell his name? I will have to look that up. Give me some time.

[Gabbin]

Well, nobody seems to know. I think the song originated pre-script. Ha. Or they couldn't write cuz they were....well, drunk.

'Green bottle' academic not hanging around
Musical controversy
Brian Hunt
National Post



Prof. Pierre d'Ouidlede displays the manuscript fragment at the Ecole de vielle musique in Grenoble. The picture was taken shortly after the discovery of the artifact in September, 1998.
A fiercely intense debate about the nature of scholarship, sparked by the discovery of a fragment of English folk song, has taken a new twist this week with the disappearance of the Canadian scholar who has been a chief protagonist. Dr. Brett Shatner, the musicologist who has been taking his European counterparts to task for their alleged lack of intellectual rigour, was reported missing from his Don Mills, Ont., residence last Friday.

This sudden vanishing act (Shatner was due to deliver a lecture in North York, Ont., this morning) brings to a climax a story that began in September. The song that sparked academic acrimony is an unlikely bone of contention: the English ditty Ten Green Bottles, a variant of which is well known in North America as 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

In all previously known versions of the English song the verses count down to "no green bottles" from the figure 10, thus:


"Ten green bottles hanging on the wall
Ten green bottles hanging on the wall
And if one green bottle should accidentally fall
There'd be nine green bottles hanging on the wall . . ."

However, in September, 1998, a French scholar, Pierre d'Ouidlede, announced the discovery of a page of poetry manuscript, apparently dating from the late 14th century, containing what seems to be an early version. Allowing for changes in language between the Chaucerian age and our own, the scheme of the song seems unmistakably the same:

"Syxthene boetell gryne
Yhangen, Yhangen
Yhangen, Yhangen
Syxthene boetell gryne
Doonfal won
Syxthene boetell gryne
Yhangen, Yhangen
An . . ."

Frustratingly, the manuscript breaks off at that point. Nevertheless, musicologists were immediately abuzz at discovering that one of the best-known songs in the English language was some five centuries older than previously thought.
Speaking on the highbrow BBC Radio 3 in November, 1998, Prof. Peter Muddelwheat of the University of Thatcham in southern England declared: "It may be one of our silliest songs, but it is sublimely silly, and I personally am thrilled to think of the like of Chaucer's pilgrims passing the time [by singing it] . . . Obviously there were verses between this and [the verse beginning] 'Ten green bottles' . . . and the unlikelihood that it would have started at a random number such as 16 strongly suggests there are other verses out there waiting to be found."

Shatner, a freelance musicologist and philosopher from Toronto, heard the broadcast while visiting London for a symposium. To the Canadian, the English professor's words were a red rag to a bull -- to which animal's droppings he allegedly alluded in the e-mail he immediately fired to Muddelwheat's office.

The exact contents of that communication have not been made public, but a slightly more restrained version of the same argument was published in The Daily Telegraph a few days later. Wrote Shatner: "It is a profound shock to see the depths to which British scholarship seems to have sunk. If it is "obvious" to Prof. Muddelwheat that verses exist for which there is no material evidence, then he should perhaps change his professional title to 'clairvoyant' rather than 'musicologist.' "

Muddelwheat responded in a letter printed in the Telegraph two days later: "I am not sure what standards apply in Canada," he wrote, "but in Great Britain we have been around long enough to have the confidence to approach questions of scholarship with a certain degree of common sense . . . it is particularly sad that Mr. [sic] Shatner seems unable to distinguish between informal remarks made in a radio broadcast and the very different disciplines of academic publication. Perhaps in his country scholarship does not go back beyond the invention of wireless."

The Telegraph allowed one more letter, a reply from Shatner, before declaring the correspondence closed. Repeating his point that deductions must be based on evidence ("It is this that separates the scholar from the layman"), Shatner asserted that there was no exact correspondence between the mediaeval verse and the modern song: "It is a gigantic leap of faith to say they are one and the same. It is, for a musicologist, an unpardonable act to assume the existence of material that links separate entities."

If the Telegraph thought it had quashed the debate, it was mistaken. Three weeks later, in another British publication, Lucas's Curios, Mr. E. C. Poswaithe claimed that he had done extensive research into the song Ten Green Bottles while at university in the early 1950s. He had, he said, proved to his own satisfaction that the song originated in the London underworld of the 1830s.

"Sir Robert Peel's 1829 Metropolitan Police Act had made life much less comfortable for the criminal classes. The bane of their life were the officers of the law known by various popular names: 'bobbies' and 'peelers' in honour of their founder and, on account of their green uniforms and curved helmets, giving them in profile a resemblance to a string bean, 'the Bow Street Runners.'

"To the criminal world, however, they were almost universally known as 'greenbottles' and, since they were responsible for the hanging of many a felon, what could be more satisfying than the thought of 10 greenbottles hanging on a wall?" To those who put forward alternative derivations, Poswaithe said he had a simple answer. "If these are glass bottles, why should they be 'hanging' rather than 'standing' on a wall -- the latter situation would not only be more logical but more likely to precipitate the destructive series of tumbles the song catalogues incrementally."

The matter might have rested there had not Postwaithe gone on to suggest that the discovery of the "lost verse" might be a hoax.

The hitherto silent d'Ouidlede made his first and so far only contribution to the controversy in the January, 1999, issue of Lucas's Curios. "While I cannot comment on the opinions expressed by my colleagues . . . I can assure everyone that the manuscript is entirely genuine. It was found in the collection of a 19th-century Spanish curator, Don Valliparque, and has been authenticated by a number of experts." The magazine carried a photographic reproduction of the fragment.

Anyone hoping for a final word from Shatner is, for the time being anyway, likely to be disappointed. This morning he was due to appear at the North York Centre for Advanced Thought in suburban Toronto to present a paper titled "After the colon: the words before the colon considered in context." However, a spokesman at the Centre, situated above Spice - Wings, confirmed that the lecture had been cancelled as Shatner has been officially reported as missing. Neighbours at his Don Mills residence say he was last seen on Friday, heading in the direction of Hamilton, Ont.

[Phalon]

Wow, such controversary! It was much easier to think it was George Thourogood, which I shall spell George Thoroughgood, because it just looks better, and who sang "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer", of which I've never heard T. Wynette sing.

[Gabbin]

I know, Gams, they are all fighting over a drinking song. You would think they were at a bar.

1554. A nice dark Guiness. I learned, of late, that dark beers are higher in carbs and calories but not alcohol. The Belgium beers with XXX are higher in alcohol and, you can only purchase it in darkened sex toy shops.

[Gabbin]

Here is a little ditty about my new favorite beer, 1554:

Phil Benstein, our resident rumpled professor, stumbled onto Zwartbier in an 1888 tome creatively named “Popular Beverages of Various Countries.” He had trouble convincing brewmaster Peter Bouckaert that such a beer existed back in 16th - century Belgium, so the pair made two trips to Belgium to research this obscure style in the archives of Belgium’s specialty brewers. The oldest reference to these black beers that our dynamic duo uncovered was in the year 1554 (from the official New Belgium Brewery site).

Other than being dark in color, 1554 has little in common with Porters or Stouts. The beer is fermented at relatively high temperatures using a European lager yeast that imparts a refreshing, zesty acidity. Chocolate and coffee tones in the nose give way to a surprisingly clean finish. With 1554 our staff hoped to create a beer similar to what folks enjoyed nearly five-hundred years ago without ignoring five-hundred years of technological innovation.We hope you’ll agree that 1554 is the delicious result of a lot of well-spent library time.

[Gabbin]

Apparently I am the only one truly a connossiour (spell check that for me, yes?) of liquor, a die-hard fan. I shall continue to drone.

My pal, bless her newly-departed soul, left me with a can of beer. Now, I am no can o' beer drinker. I am a snob, there. Wine in a box, okay, beer in a can-nope.

However, this is no ordinary beer, bebe, noooo. It is Young's Double Chocolate Stout from...Britain's oldest brewery (it says so).

When I open this beer it goes eeeeessssheeewwpoi! The beer is talking. When I pour it out it seems as if I should have shaken it cuz there are two distinct colors-one beer and one chocolate. This is a huge turn-off for me....how about you? It has a nice stout head (always an asset in many parts of life, especially body parts). It tastes weak, though, but is not bad.

I am drinking it in honor of my newly departed pal. Damn her for leaving me.

5.2% alchohol.

[Gabbin]

Oh, and this morning, whence picking up said empty beer can I noticed it had a white mixer ball in it. So classy.

[Phalon]

Gabbin - I keep meaning to get in here and comment, but I've been a bump on a lager lately, not doing a whole lot of anything. I could be Lager-roller, I bet - I've always wanted to try anyway - but my Paul Bunyons are killing me.

I'm not a beer Connie Sewer, (I'll go with the phonetic proper spelling there, because I don't know how to properly spell connoisseur). I do like the stuff though - the domestic light stuff for the 'weak and feeble'; I like it after work on a hot day; I like to drink it out on the front porch in the evenings. Those stout ales do me in, and I was surprised to learn they contain no more alcohol than other beers. This surely can not be so; my brain function tells me differently whenever I veer away from light beer.

[Gabbin]

It's okay. I shall bear the full burden of alchohol here. Where is Lushlapunk? She could help. I did try and order the Wisconsin Lunchbox...I am thinking that might be a bartender-specific drink.

My pal's have interesting quirky drinky thangs. One cannot drink red wine the other white just because it effects them the same manner. Me, ...it affects..effects special effects me equally.

Why is English so damn tricky? Don't answer that, Maeve.

Well, I was given some Grand Marnier which is brandy...I believe it translates into grand death. Yum.