Lost in Space
We'll open this, but it needs a conversation starter. Also, let's keep the topic to legal drinking.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Jupiterian Local
Silly Fighteer, everyone knows that alcohol is a conversation starter!
So, what kind of booze do y'all prefer? I'm generally a beer guy, but only heavier stuff like Sam Adams or New Belgium rather than the ubiquitous Budweiser/Coors/Miller/etc. Pretty much the only time I'll drink the latter is when it's the only stuff available, which is usually at events (sports games, concerts, etc). Liquor I'll drink on occasion, but I tend to go for shots over mixed drinks — most mixed drinks I find pretty unpleasant (too much drink and not enough mix, generally, and I never really warmed up to the taste of hard liquor), so I'd rather just get the booze down without bothering with the taste. I almost never drink wine — not because I dislike it, just because I'd rather order a beer.
When I'm drinking a beer with dinner or something, I like Belgium Whites — Blue Moon, Shock Top, etc. If I'm drinking a beer by itself, I like darker, smoother stuff. Stouts like Guinness or Boddingtons, for example. Stuff that uses nitrogen instead of carbon dioxide tends to be smooth and awesome as hell.
edited 21st Oct '14 6:31:22 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
I like Guiness. Gotta buy some bottles of it on Friday.
edited 21st Oct '14 7:11:38 AM by Quag15
margaritas. ciders. guinness.
In terms of wine, Port wine (obviously), Lambrusco, regular red wines which aren't too strong, a couple of white, green or rosé wines.
Lost in Space
I like almost any beer as long as it isn't one of the Big Brand crap lagers (Budweiser, Miller, Coors, etc.), and light beers taste like flavored water to me. I am a big fan of stouts and wheat beers (Guinness is one of my favorites).
I enjoy wine but not as much; I prefer sweet wines like blushes or "dessert" wines over the dryer ones.
For liquor, I go with the standards like vodka or rum — I'm a big fan of some flavored rums like Mount Gay, a taste I acquired when I took a cruise to Barbados. I can't stand whiskey or its variants: Scotch, bourbon, etc. Gin is not a favorite, either, unless used as a mixer. My favorite mixed drink is an amaretto sour. Tequila is okay but it has to be mixed with something; my first drinking experience (at 20, because I was such a rebel as a kid) was with straight tequila and it left an indelible scar on my psyche.
I drink maybe once a month.
edited 21st Oct '14 7:31:47 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
HGW XX/7
Personally, I go for beer and whisky. I'm a sort of stick in the mud that way. I've never been a big wine guy, and I've tried various spirits but never really found anything that compares to whisky.
When it comes to whisky, I prefer something peaty and strong. Islay malts, especially Laphroaig, are very good in this respect. Laphraoig 10 Year Old is the best of the bunch. Moving around our fair, whisky-producing Islands, Talisker Storm is a fantastic whisky. Highland Park is milder, but none the worse for it.
Whisky is probably the one thing I am legit most proud of as a Scotsman. It's fantastic to think an industry with that kind of heritage and such an archaic, old-ways-are-the-best production method could be such a dominating force. It makes my country seem very STRONK! (*scotting intensifies)
My opinion is generally that local is king for beers. The Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh is the be all and end all of awesomeness. My favourite beer ever is Deuchars IPA, but only on draught. For some reason the bottled version has a nasty lagery fizziness to it. At home, I drink McEwan's Export, like my father and his father before him. It has a nice durability to it, in the sense that it isn't ruined by chilling if you fancy a cold beer.
A new discovery since I'm wintering in Copenhagen is Jacobsen's Original Dark Lager - beer brewed the same way the founder of the Carlsberg brewery did it all those years ago.
If I want something cheap, then the old Scottish "cheap beer" of Tennent's is nothing to be laughed at. They also had one of the best advertisements ever back in the day:
edited 21st Oct '14 7:32:01 AM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der Partei
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
If I had a proper pub that served those fine Irish and Scottish drinks, I wouldn't have needed to buy the bottles.
Liquors/liqueurs: Singeverga and Frangelico
. The former is made by Benedictine monks in a town close to my city.
edited 21st Oct '14 7:36:39 AM by Quag15
As a hard-drinkin' college boy, Jägermeister is my go-to. There's also a pub in this town that sells decent blueberry beer in growlers, so I'll occasionally go down and get a refill.
United Earth
Dry Cardhu or Chivas whiskey. Best quality/price ratio. Also, hard cider, when I can get it.
Mead I love to bits, whenever I can get a hold of it.
Bartender strongly influenced my attitude towards alcohol in general and cocktails in particular. Kami no Shizuku kind of did the same for wine. I guess I need to see a drink featured prominently into a story and being given narrative baggage before I gain a taste for the thing itself.
But I've never quite gotten the taste for beer. Small quantities just make my jaws hurt. I either have to drink it by the 1-L Maß or not at all. Praga Plisner and Munich Wheat types are my favourites. Though Guiness is okay too, I guess.
Jägermeister is fine, I guess, but I feel like I "outgrew" it somehow. Absinthe, though... ah, that's the stuff. And Stroh. Fucking Stroh. You drink it through your sinuses!
edited 21st Oct '14 7:47:55 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
HGW XX/7
I seriously don't understand the Guinness love on this thread. Hideously, hideously overrated.
Schild und Schwert der Partei
question of what's available in the states. I'm not loyal to the brand so much as the actual drink.
Love vodka, schnapp mixtures, and dessert wines as well.
A procrastination in of itself
I mainly drink Vodka and mixers BTU that's because I normally don't like the taste of any alcohol and find that with vodka at least I'm tasting something else.
However I've recently rediscovered a love for Pimms, I should probably branch out more but I'm never sure what I'll like, and living in London means everything is stupidly overpriced.
Finally it turns out I like Ale, I used to think I didn't like beer but it turns out I do like ales, particularly dark ales. Anyone got recommendations for good dark ales that I might find in the London area?
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Zzzzzzzzzz
I know Fighter opened this, but I have to wonder, with The Responsible Drinkers thread in The Old Folks Home, The Troper Drinking Association in the Covens, and The Drunk Thread in Yack Fest, why do we need another one in OTC to cover the same territory?
edited 21st Oct '14 11:38:23 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
A procrastination in of itself
Because if you browse OTC for any amount of time you end up going I Need a Freaking Drink?
Personally I only hang out in OTC, so that's why i find it nice.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
United Earth
Same here. The right side of the fora gives me allergies. It's just not possible to get a good, in-depth discussion going there. Here, we can start talking in-depth about, say, why certain alcohols have different effects from each other, the economy of their production, the challenges of their logistics, their cultural significance, their gastronomical uses, why young people like to abuse it so much, and so on and so forth. We can have in-depth discussions where we learn stuff. We can debate.
Speaking of which, here's a redemption story of how Absinthe was vilified by the stuffy establishment philistine types because writers and poets and bohemians loved it, and then Vindicated by History in recent years.
Although it is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a liqueur, absinthe is not traditionally bottled with added sugar; it is therefore classified as a spirit.[6] Absinthe is traditionally bottled at a high level of alcohol by volume, but it is normally diluted with water prior to being consumed.
Absinthe originated in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland in the late 18th century. It rose to great popularity as an alcoholic drink in late 19th- and early 20th-century France, particularly among Parisian artists and writers. Owing in part to its association with bohemian culture, the consumption of absinthe was opposed by social conservatives and prohibitionists. Ernest Hemingway, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Amedeo Modigliani, Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Aleister Crowley, Erik Satie, and Alfred Jarry were all known absinthe drinkers.[7]
Absinthe has often been portrayed as a dangerously addictive psychoactive drug.[8] The chemical compound thujone, although present in the spirit in only trace amounts, was blamed for its alleged harmful effects. By 1915, absinthe had been banned in the United States and in much of Europe, including France, the the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria-Hungary. Although absinthe was vilified, it has not been demonstrated to be any more dangerous than ordinary spirits. Recent studies have shown that the absinthe's psychoactive properties (apart from that of the alcohol) have been exaggerated.[8] A revival of absinthe began in the 1990s, following the adoption of modern European Union food and beverage laws that removed longstanding barriers to its production and sale. By the early 21st century, nearly 200 brands of absinthe were being produced in a dozen countries, most notably in France, Switzerland, Australia, United States, Spain, and the Czech Republic.
"Stories of my psychoactiveness have been greatly exaggerated," states the Green Fae.
Is this a cool story or what?
Another interesting topic: the Salvation Army and its Sitcom Archnemesis the Skeleton Army, for and against temperance respectively:
Leader of The Salvation Army, General Andre Cox, speaking at Atlanta Temple in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
As the Salvation Army grew rapidly in the late 19th century, it generated opposition in England. Opponents, grouped under the name of the Skeleton Army, disrupted Salvation Army meetings and gatherings, with tactics such as throwing rocks, bones, rats, and tar as well as physical assaults on members of The Salvation Army. Much of this was led by pub owners who were losing business because of the Army's opposition to alcohol and targeting of the frequenters of saloons and public houses.
Seriously, the Skeleton Army was an actual thing.
edited 21st Oct '14 1:19:48 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Skeleton Army? Don't tell Tumblr.
Back on-topic, I usually drink European beers or margaritas.
Direct all enquiries to Jamie B Good
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Why don't tell tumblr? *wonders*
United Earth
Yeah, why not?
I bought a bottle of
◊ Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse when I had my birthday (2nd bottle from the left). Very smooth and it went well with the Smørrebrød me and my mother made that day for the family.
With that in mind, what's the best German beer? Is the Franziskaner among the best?
United Earth
It's definitely my favourite brand. In general, monk-brewn booze tends to 
me.
edited 21st Oct '14 2:12:31 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
That really depends on whom you ask.
Ask a Bavarian and they might say one of the kinds of Weisbier, a Düsseldorfer will probably go for some kind of Alt, someone from Cologne Kölsch.
Basically every bigger city has its own brewery and the locals championing it usually.
There is not simply a best beer, because there are far too much variations of beer.
Franziskaner is a popular Weisbier though.
I'm not a big beer drinker, but if I do its usually Tannenzäpfle
edited 21st Oct '14 2:20:43 PM by 3of4
"You can reply to this Message!"
Indeed. The monks are very crafty at this sort of thing.
Yeah, I should've phrased it better. But would you say that the Franziskaner would be among the best German beers, at least?
Tannenzäpfle is not available here in Portugal, sadly. Most of the German beer that is sold here is either some kinds of Weisbier and/or Kölsch. I'm curious about the Alt and would like to try it sometime as well.
Btw, has anyone ever tried Portuguese beer (Sagres, Super Bock)?
edited 21st Oct '14 2:26:41 PM by Quag15
This is the thread to discuss alcohol in all its forms, and everything related to it. From liquor to liqueur, from beer to whiskey, from burning methilic alcohol to rubbing alcohol. Drinking habits, or the absence thereof. Taboos and tricks. Cocktails and blends and cuvées. This is the Alcohol Thread, and I'm opening with something out of left field: