Martini Groove

I get e-mails all the time from the drink snobs who look upon you in disdain as you order a mojito or couldn't bear the thought that sometimes you just want to drink a damned gin & tonic.  Not everything needs to have absinthe in it or be some homemade liqueur that you fermented inside the ass of a goat using old chardonnay barrels.  Hey folks, you're at martinigroove.com.  Sure, I cover the drinks that have things like a "flavor profile" but that doesn't mean I don't still love my martinis.  And what we all need every now and then is a good old Martini FAQ.  Read it.  Learn it.  Live it.  The Martini FAQ

I, for one, am glad for something as complex and wondrous as gin and it helps the world turn in to Drunky McDrunkerson with a bit of class and taste.  You can't shotgun it but you can put a nice sweet vermouth in it and step off-campus for a bit. Oxley gin is not easily made and it's probably not for you.  First, they hand spoon their macerated grain in to the kettle but then they do something you weren't expecting.  Well, unless you were expecting them to create a vacuum that causes the alcohol to vaporize at -5°C. In the true manner of distillation, the vapor passes through a colder probe at -100°C where it changes back to a liquid.  If that's what you were expecting, then you were right.  They only make 120 bottles of the sweet juniper goodness a day and only for 4 days a week, so you probably won't get one.  Hell, I probably won't get one and I'm friggin' popular. The stuff is launching in SoCal with no price set yet.  The bottle comes with a

There's just something about a beer after a hard workout.  It always goes down smooth and seems to be a great fit. Now, you don't have to worry about all those petty commenters who tell you that you're hurting yourself!  Apparently, beer's bubbles, sugars, and cold-filtered marketing using hot girls all work together to help you re-hydrate fast.  How fast?  FASTER THAN WATER AND THAT'S FAST! The study, from Spain, had 25 students running on a treadmill in a room with a temperature of 104 degrees.  They ran to the point of exhaustion and then measured their hydration levels and found that the ones drinking beer to re-hydrate were able to regain their lost water faster and were more quickly quenched of their thirst.  Also, they showed significant improvement in their Flip-Cup team. It's Better To Drink Beer After Exercise Than Water

Camper found this. He's brilliant.

So, YouTube is turning in to a hotbed of crappy bartending videos. Ever want to learn how to ruin a perfectly delicious drink? Sure you did! Now you can learn from a Douchebag the best way to kill your Mai Tai! You'll have to find your own Ed Hardy shirt though.

Cocktail great, Jamie Boudreau, shows us the finer parts of Absinthe service.

There are hundreds of ways to get your grape juice of the bottle without a corkscrew.  The easiest is probably to buy a screw top.  However, I like cork better (It's sustainable) and tend to buy wines that use cork for that reason.  Here's what you can do if you can't find that elusive wine opener in the bottom of your junk drawer.

It's so noisy!  It's so beautiful!